Students will be pinning photos connected to useful resources for early childhood educators. Users can upload images and “pin” websites to their personal boards. Pinterest is similar to using online bookmarks. She has already set up a collaborative "Pinboard" on Pinterest-a photo-sharing social media tool-based on feedback from other teachers and students who mentioned how popular the site is for early childhood educators. Fullerton was impressed with the quality of their work, and one student even suggested the use of Glogster for the presentation of an assignment later in the course.įullerton plans on continuing her use of social networking tools in her courses for a variety of learning objectives. She noticed in the course mini-surveys that many students mentioned how much they enjoyed creating the poster. The students took to Glogster right away. By posting the link in the Discussion Board, other students were able to respond to the introductions and discover shared interests and build a mental picture of the classmates with which they would interact throughout the course. Fullerton and Hoskins created the first "Glogsters" as an example. They then pasted the link to their poster into a Blackboard Discussion forum to serve as an introduction of themselves. Glogster, short for “graphics blog” is a Flash-based online interactive poster that allows users to post backgrounds, text, images, photos, audio, and video effects.įor this assignment in her Program Planning for Infants and Toddlers course, the students were required to create a Glog poster by uploading pictures of themselves and their interests into the poster tool.
In consultation with her assigned instructional designer, Syleste Hoskins, Fullerton came up with an introductory assignment using Glogster, a "visual" social networking website that allows anyone to design a free online multimedia image. The objective of the assignment was to build a learning community by creating a poster that reflects their goals and interests. She wanted her students to establish a sense of community in the course and determined that the use of online social media tools would foster that.
Elizabeth Fullerton began the process of transitioning the Early Childhood Graduate Certificate program to the online learning environment, she immediately expressed an interest in incorporating other web technologies into her courses.