Russell Stannard discovers electronic posters.
There was a real buzz at the IATEFL conference in Harrogate, UK, this year and the technology talks seemed to be better attended than ever. I came away with a lot of ideas. In this article I want to look at what might be described as ‘electronic posters’, though in reality the technology could be used to develop all sorts of things. Thanks to Ozge and Conchita for their talk, which inspired this article.
Electronic posters are basically electronic pages that might include text and pictures, links, video, graphics and sounds, all built up around one theme. They are great for project work. So if you were going to get your students to write about a visit to London or the pyramids in Egypt or Labour Day, then you could get them to produce an electronic poster where they can write some text, add videos that they create themselves or links to videos on the internet, pictures related to the subject, etc. Electronic posters have the feel of a real poster because the students can be very creative in design and layout, and can add things anywhere on the page. We are going to look at two very different tools for creating electronic posters. Wallwisher is very simple and only allows you to create a very basic poster with links to video, pictures and audio that can already be found on the internet. It also allows you to write text and choose from a limited number of designs. Glogster, on the other hand, can be used to produce very sophisticated posters, including things the students have made themselves in the form of videos, pictures, text, etc, as well as content from the internet. In fact, it is so powerful that it could also be used to make websites, blogs or podcasts, as it offers recording facilities, too.
As always, I have produced some videos to show you how to use these tools.
Wallwisher is very easy to use and can be great for brainstorming ideas or creating simple posters. You could put the students into groups and tell them to brainstorm ideas connected to a certain topic, to create a to-do list for a project, to write down good and bad points about a certain subject, etc. Wallwisher could then be the place where they bring all their ideas together, linking to videos, pictures and adding text. Once the posters are created, they can be shared in a number of ways. You can see an example of what Wallwisher can do at www.wallwisher.com/demo.
You can control what is actually written on the ‘walls’ by approving the content before it becomes public. Anyone can make changes to a wall (by opening up someone’s wall and editing the content) but they can’t make their changes permanent – only the person who created the wall can save any changes. This feature is quite nice because you could produce a wall with grammar mistakes or gaps in it and get the students to open the wall and correct or complete it.
Once you have signed up, you simply click on ‘Build a Wall’ and choose a background colour. You must add a title and a description. Then you can start to build your wall. The controls are very limited. You simply double-click on the screen and a square will appear which allows you to do a few things. You can add some text (there is a limit on the number of characters) or you can add links to pictures, video or audio from the web. The tool is pretty restrictive in this sense, as you can’t add any pictures from your own computer; it is all about ‘linking’ to content that is already on the web. You click on ‘OK’ once you have done it and then click on another part of the screen to create another box. What you do is saved automatically. By copying the url in the browser you can send your wall to anyone you like. If you go to‘Home’, you will see all the walls that you have created.
Glogster is a pretty powerful multimedia tool, yet it has simple controls that work really well. It gives you complete charge over the content of your electronic poster. You can add pictures, video and sounds from your computer, grab them from the web or you can even create them in Glogster itself. Glogster also has a massive range of built-in images, videos, etc that you can make use of. There are many designs, fonts and images to choose from, and the design features allow students to be really creative. One nice thing is that the posters can be produced by choosing from certain styles. So, for example, if the students always uses the ‘hippy’ style for the text, frames and images, etc, then the result will look very good as all the content will match.
You can even produce Glogster pages that link to other pages. For example, you could build a video diary to which the students add a new linked page every week with text, pictures, audio, etc to reflect what happened during that week.
Take a look at these examples:
- http://patrix.glogster.com/googles-new-zurich-office (a Glogster made by the Google team about their new offices)
- http://dc10.glogster.com/glog-5529-3049 (about an ice-hockey team)
This site is extremely popular and the creativity of some of the work is amazing. If you go to the ‘Categories’ section and just look through some of the examples that are available, you will get some great ideas about how to use them in class, and what sort of topics you might like to set. I was so stunned by what I saw that I ended up spending hours just looking at them. This site is really impressive, and the way it is being used is exactly what the web should be all about.
Russell Stannard is a principal lecturer in ICT at the University of Westminster, UK. He won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Initiatives in Information and Communications Technology for his website www.teachertrainingvideos.com. He was also one of the winners of the 2010 British Council ELTons awards.
This article first appeared in issue 69 of English Teaching professional, July 2010.