Glogster
 | |
| This file may be deleted at any time. | |
Type of site | Online platform for creative expressions with social network features |
|---|---|
| Available in | English, Portuguese |
| URL | www.glogster.com |
| Commercial | Banner ads, referral marketing |
| Registration | Optional |
Glogster is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters, or glogs. The glog, short for graphical blog, is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content.[1] Glogster was founded in 2007. Currently this social network has hundreds of thousands registered users. The majority of the Glogster community are teenagers [citation needed].
Glogster provides an environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio (MP3), videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation.[2] Glogster is based on flash elements.[3] Posters can be shared with other people. Glogs can also be exported and saved to computer-compatible formats. [4]
Each visitor can integrate dynamic multi-sensory resources into traditionally text-oriented tasks.
A part of Glogster, the Glogster EDU education project was launched to serve in the educational environment. Education Glogster allows teachers and pupils to use glogs as instructional aids. Users have the option of choosing the freedom of complete expression with Glogster or Glogster EDU with teacher controls.
History
Glogster was launched in December 2007 and Glogster EDU in October 2009. Since its founding, Glogster has experienced rapid growth and now has users in more than 200 countries and territories. Even though the portal is targeted primarily at young people, many of the users are aged 25 or over. At present, there are over 2.7 million glogs on the website.
At the time of its establishing Glogster was inspired partly by classic paper posters and generally by the worldwide poster pop-culture of teenagers. At that time boring and “orthogonal” internet was another inspiration. The objective was to enable people to turn something, to enable unlimited creative self-expression.
In 2009 Glogster has offices in Boston, Prague and Colombo.
Glogster EDU
The growing popularity of Glogster helped spawn Glogster EDU to assist teachers in providing dynamic and interactive teaching experiences. The EDU Glogster project is intended primarily for pupils and teachers in primary and secondary schools.
Teachers privately register their students and may create a safe virtual class with as many as two hundred students. Teaching glogs are private and are made accessible to others at the discretion of the teacher. Glogster EDU is a kind of learning management system. Teachers can create projects with their students cross other schools. Moreover, the Glogs may be developed under various categories, such as, for example, mathematics, or physics, for example http://edu.glogster.com/category/Math/. During a lesson teachers respond and assess pupils’ works. The platform is secure, as it may be accessed only by a teacher who may fully supervise his/her students’ activities and determine which Glogs go public and thus create an online digital encyclopedia with educational content. [5]
Glogster EDU comes in two versions: EDU Basic, which is free and EDU Premium, which is paid. The key difference is in the number of students, management of students, projects, class and sharing of students all across the schools and a number of further functions, such as, for example, drawing in Glog, the possibility of uploading data into Glog, or the possibility of using special Glogster EDU Premium media galleries.[6]
Glogster EDU is currently being used by 150,000 teachers with over 2,000,000 students all around the world.[7]
In the near future, the EDU Glogster development team will design and release an enhanced version of Glogster EDU 2.0 which should further meet the basic mission of this site to educate young students and prepare them to use the benefits of the Internet and multimedia applications.[8]
Cooperation with educational services
In June 2009 Glogster EDU announced a cooperative partnership with SchoolTube, one of the world's leading Internet portals focusing on educational media.[8] This partnership allows the students and teachers who are using Glogster EDU to share their glogs on the popular server School Tube and import multimedia from SchoolTube to their glogs.
Since May 2009 Glogster EDU also cooperates with DetentionSlip.org, an online media company that focuses on news related to public education.[2]
List of partnerships of Glogster and Glogster EDU and the goal of cooperation
- Edmodo (Since 2010) – Glogster embeds Glogs into their services.
- Wikispaces (Since 2010) – Glogster embeds Glogs into their services.
- TeacherTube (Since 2010) – Glogster EDU has a Teacher Tube partner profile. They list Glogster among other services of similar type.
- TinyPic (Since 2009) – option to log into the service and insert TinyPic images when creating Glogs.
Awards
Project Glogster.com was selected the fourth most successful web start-up project in 2008 at the Prague Web Expo trade fair.[9]
Financing
The Glogster project is funded primarily from private sources. In the future the company may wish to modify their funding model. Glogster occasionally cooperates with well-known brands in competitions for the user. There is little paid advertisement on the site.
References
- ^ [1]
- ^ a b Reuters, March 13, 2009. Glogster EDU and DetentionSlip.org Announce "What`s Wrong With This Picture?" Contest. Reuters. Retrieved July 5.
- ^ Arrington, Michael, December 29, 2007. Glogster - Like Geocities (in a bad way), And In Flash. TechCrunch. Retrieved July 8.
- ^ Lowensohn, Josh, January 4, 2008. Glogster brings glitter graphic blogging to the masses. WebWare. Retrieved July 1.
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ student Motiovation in the Classroom
- ^ a b PitchEngine, June 16, 2009. Glogster EDU Partners with SchoolTube to Enable School-Safe File Sharing. PitchEngine. Retrieved July 12.
- ^ WebExpo. Startup Show - soutěž pro startupy. WebExpo. Retrieved July 1.