Glogster et al...

So the sickness lingers at "grandparents camp" here in the great lake state.  I'm still struggling and Lala woke up this morning headachey, feverish and throwing up...three hours later and a trip to the ER we had to cancel her trip to MSU for their (grandpa and her) academic camp.  She is sick and bummed now.  In the chaos, I've set up my Edumodo for my classes next year and played around with glogster some more.  It is really a neat tool but for perfectionists who are design impaired like me it is time consuming.  I'm really thinking that it may be great for hosting a virtual science fair next year.  Kind of geeked about that.  I also think that it will be cool to use a a virtual bulletin board- yes- we 6th grade teachers still do that- but one that I can get kids in to working on too... we can have lots of versions of the BB theme all posted in our Edmodo "classroom."  Usually my BB help to introduce the larger theme of my inquiry units, for example, one unit's central question is "Why do we sort plastics for recycling?"  The BB generally ends up being examples of different plastics labeled with their #s and all the questions we have about plastics.  I envision lots of kids creating virtual BBs with our class generated questions and sharing them on Edmodo.  I think that webspiration does mind mapping  but I like the multimedia-ness (not a word- I know) of glogster.  Here is the glog I made today.  It's usually one of my first BBs.  I do a lesson on the scientific method they rewrite it, make posters and and my students finally  "discover" or "uncover" the idea that it is cyclical and that becomes our BB.  Using glogster with this lesson will hopefully allow them to develop a deeper understanding of the parts of the scientific method. I'm also thinking about how glogster might allow them to collaborate on a BB.