Module 6

Creative Communication
The technology tools bubble.us and glogster are fantastic examples of a "non-traditional, fun way for kids to learn". They are free, user friendly, interactive, collaborative and are a great way for students to develop their skills and express themselves.

Bubbl.us is on online brainstorming and mind mapping application which enables you to organise thoughts/ideas/information logically and clearly into a main idea bubble and various related ideas bubbles (termed a "child" or "sibling", depending on their placement in the mind map).

Glogster allows you to create a glog (not to be confused with a blog!) which is an online poster in which you can easily incorporate graphics, photos, videos, music and text. It is a multi-modal tool that is very open ended and creative. A great way to differentiate learning tasks and products for students.

The technology tools introduced in this module were both completely new to me. I enjoyed exploring these tools and having a bit of a play with them, but even after spending quite some time doing so, I feel that I have just scraped the surface! I would love to use these tools with my students, but need to become a little more familiar with them myself first. However, I have to say that our students, probably most students, are so technology savvy that they would soon be teaching me how to use these applications!

Often when we introduce new technology to our students in Stage 3, we simply show them the basics, then give them time to "explore" the technology. They are then invited to share their learnings with each other and present their new found skills to the class. What they can master in a short time is amazing! Once students become more comfortable and familiar with the new technology, they can confidently use it in other areas of their learning. I think this would be a great way to introduce bubble.us and glogster to the children, especially as they are new tools for them. Showing examples of possible uses of these tools would also be beneficial.

We have actually programmed some learning experiences for next term to introduce and explore these tools during our whole class weekly Technology Centre lessons. We would then like the students to use these tools to carry out and present work in other key learning areas. For example, concept maps about bible passages in Religion (bubbl.us), presentation of an autobiography study in Reading (glogster) and a poster outlining their political party's policies in HSIE (glogster). I'm sure students would also love to present a range of other things on these tools.

These tools are a great way for students to organise their work and understandings on an ongoing basis. It is easy for students to access their work (at home or at school), add to or edit their work and invite others to view or contribute to their work. These tools are also a great way for students to present their learnings at the culmination of a topic or unit, and could therefore form part of their assessment.

A few areas of concern...

• At times, I found it quite tricky to edit in bubbl.us and became pretty frustrated! I'm not sure how students would go with this- they would probably figure it out! I may just need a little more practice. Watching the instructional video again would probably also help, and would be a wonderful way to introduce this tool to the students.


• Glogster also has so many options and resources, which is fantastic, but is something that the students may get bogged down with. They love making things look "pretty" and in doing so, sometimes don't actually get to the task at hand. I think allowing them time to purely explore the tool first, will make it easier to use the tool for a different purpose at a later date.


• Lastly, I'm not sure if we can simply just get students to set up a bubble.us and glogster account. While it is super easy to do so, I'm not sure of the ethical and privacy issues surrounding this. Are we required to supervise and monitor items created using these accounts? And if so, how could we successfully do this? It would be quite difficult, as students can access them at home also. It would also be quite time consuming, as there would be so many accounts to monitor! I'm also concerened about whether it may become a vehicle for cyber bullying. Perhaps we need to address these things with students and have them, and possibly also parents, sign an agreement about responsible use of this technology. These are things that would need to be discussed at a school level before proceeding.