Incorporating Tools into
the Online Environment
Glogster.Com, Reading Comprehension,
& Short Story Analysis
In
the English Teaching major at Universidad Latina, we have two Reading Skills
courses in which students’ vocabulary, reading comprehension, and understanding
of short story plot structure is developed. When teaching the second of these
two courses, I have my students work on blogs, wikis, glogs, and other Web 2.0
tools to engage students into PBL tasks to achieve course learning goals and
objectives.
In
the past, while working with them by means of WebQuests, I have had students
create their own interactive posters in Gloster.Com with a short story written
by Jack London entitled To Build a Fire.
ABCD
Objective for Reading Skills and Short Story Plot Analysis
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After
being trained on how to create a poster (glog) on Glogster.Com, students will
create their own glog to analyze the plot in Jack London’s To Build a Fire and to create a
synopsis of the story’s plot by accurately summarizing the story in a
vodcast, which will be embedded in their posters, and by accurately
identifying the story’s conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and
resolution.
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As
stated in the ABCD objective for this online task, learners will be introduced
and trained on the use (and potentials) of Glogster.Com. They will also be
given a WebQuest to be developed along with their reading of To Build a Fire by Jack London, which
will be used to assess student understanding of short story’s structure.
Additionally, students will be asked to create a vodcast, which will be
embedded within their glogs, in which they are verbally summarizing the story.
As
a way to materialize the creation of an electronic poster or glog, Glogster.Com
was chosen due to its versatile features and potentials to incorporate elements
coming from other websites such as youtube, flickr, etc. Once students get the
knack of the use of this web 2.0 tool, they will be asked to create their own
and personalized posters based on the WebQuest provided to them via the class
site in Sites.Google.Com. Once their glogs are produced, learners are asked to
send their poster’s web address to get the embedding code to be displayed in
the class site for partners to provide peers feedback and constructive
criticism.
As
for challenges that can be expected while developing this reading-web 2.0
assignment, students who lack some basic knowledge of html codes or embedding
tools are helped out so they can complete the glog creation. It is oftentimes
the most common problem students confront when creating an electronic poster.
For that reason, I have two videos that illustrate the step-by-step creation of
a glog in Glogster.Com:
? To
fully comprehend the scope of this teaching reflections, it is highly advisable
that the following topics must be expanded further:
·
Glogs in educational contexts
·
Google Sites for education
·
Writing objectives
·
WebQuests in language learning
Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano
ELT Trainer, Instructor &
Curriculum Developer based in Costa Rica
Contact Information:
Email: jonacuso@gmail.com
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Pronunciation
Development
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Reading Skills
Development
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Curated Topics
Online
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Article
published on Friday, June 13, 2014
How to quote this
blog entry:
Acuña, J. (2014,
June 13). Incorporating Tools into the Online Environment: Glogster.Com,
Reading Comprehension, & Short Story Analysis: http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/2014/06/glogstercom-reading-comprehension-short.html
GlogsterTMEDU.
(2014). Glogster.Com. http://edu.glogster.com/?ref=com
Google
Sites. (n.d.). Google.Com. http://sites.google.com
London,
J. (n.d.). To build a Fire. Retrieved from American English (Bureau of
Educational and Cultural Affairs) website: http://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to-build-a-fire.pdf
Penn
State Learning Design Community Hub. (2010). Writing Objectives. Retrieved from
Penn State University website: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives
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