To begin, at this point I find it unlikely that I will use Glogster in my classes anymore. While I used to use it here and there, it is no longer free-to-use. That fact alone is a bit of a deal-breaker for me. I already invest a decent amount of my own money into resources, tools, and equipment for my students and my classroom; thirty dollars just for an individual use subscription seems a been steep for me, let alone the one hundred dollar classroom-sized subscription I would need to enable students to create their own Glogster boards.
This leaves the Discovery Education Board Builder. In all honesty, this project was the first time I ever used Discovery’s Board Builder. It was fairly easy to use as far as the user interface goes. The design and layout options are simple, yet visually appealing and linear. I think the limited design options would help to keep students focused on the content, rather than just on the design (clearly the content is weighted a bit heavier in importance than the design itself). There are several ways I think I could use the Discovery Education Board Builder to provide students with the opportunity and venue to develop their own respectful and ethical minds. One thing I do think my students would struggle with is the limited selection of pictures and videos that Discovery has to offer. To fulfill the image requirement for our project, I needed to extend my searches out to the free-to-use filter of Google Image Search, and then cite the images I opted to use on the board itself. While this would be great for students to practice ethical and respectful search criteria and credit declaration, my students still struggle with capitalizing letters without a Caps Lock button, so this aspect might be pushing it for them.
Overall, however, I think it would simply be projects and assessments, like the one I created for this final, that help students to develop their respectful and ethical minds. The more that students work with people of other cultures, with each other collaboratively, and with diverse tasks and data, the more ethical and respectful they will become. It doesn’t need to be done on specific technological tools such as Glogster or Discovery Education. In fact, I think they may develop their respectful, responsible minds more if they are given their choice of technology/media to use to accomplish certain tasks.
One final note, I set the sharing settings of my board as instructed on live.wilkes.edu. Please let me know if you cannot access it, and I will share my login information with you.
This leaves the Discovery Education Board Builder. In all honesty, this project was the first time I ever used Discovery’s Board Builder. It was fairly easy to use as far as the user interface goes. The design and layout options are simple, yet visually appealing and linear. I think the limited design options would help to keep students focused on the content, rather than just on the design (clearly the content is weighted a bit heavier in importance than the design itself). There are several ways I think I could use the Discovery Education Board Builder to provide students with the opportunity and venue to develop their own respectful and ethical minds. One thing I do think my students would struggle with is the limited selection of pictures and videos that Discovery has to offer. To fulfill the image requirement for our project, I needed to extend my searches out to the free-to-use filter of Google Image Search, and then cite the images I opted to use on the board itself. While this would be great for students to practice ethical and respectful search criteria and credit declaration, my students still struggle with capitalizing letters without a Caps Lock button, so this aspect might be pushing it for them.
Overall, however, I think it would simply be projects and assessments, like the one I created for this final, that help students to develop their respectful and ethical minds. The more that students work with people of other cultures, with each other collaboratively, and with diverse tasks and data, the more ethical and respectful they will become. It doesn’t need to be done on specific technological tools such as Glogster or Discovery Education. In fact, I think they may develop their respectful, responsible minds more if they are given their choice of technology/media to use to accomplish certain tasks.
One final note, I set the sharing settings of my board as instructed on live.wilkes.edu. Please let me know if you cannot access it, and I will share my login information with you.
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