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Pocket Manila

  What it is: Pocket Manila is a site that provides online notebooks that can be used as a journal, blog, idea bank, photo album, portfolio, group blog, ezine, story book, and more.  Pocket Manila is unique because it feels like a canvas-bound, manila paper journal.  Pocket Manila makes it feel like you are writing in a real notebook.  The pages turn, writing and pictures automatically flow to the next page and are sized correctly for the page.  Students can easily change the look of their notebooks with colors and themes.  The control panel is simple, streamlined and easy to use.     How to integrate Pocket Manila into the classroom:    Use Pocket Manila in a creative writing classroom as a creative writing journal.  Students can work on their writing wherever they have an Internet connection without having to remember to tote their journals everywhere they go.  Pocket Manila’s sharing ability makes it wonderful for collaboration in writing classes.  Students can read and comment on each others writing, leaving constructive criticism right in their journals.  Pocket Manila is also great used in the science classroom as a place to take lab notes, record observations and the scientific method.  Teachers can use Pocket Manila as a place to collect and organize lesson plans, class notes, etc.  Younger students can use Pocket Manila to record thoughts about books they are reading, practice their writing.  Teachers can comment right in the student notebook.   Tips:   I love Pocket Manila because there is something special about having a notebook or writing journal of your own to record thoughts.  Those of us who didn’t grow up with the Internet appreciate simple pleasures like notebooks that feel like notebooks and day runners full of sticky notes and scribbled reminders!  Pocket Manila provides the nostalgia of a notebook and the convenience and cool factor of digital.  Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Pocket Manila in your classroom.

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Glogster

Posted by admin | Posted in Art, Blogs, Foreign Language, History, Internet Safety, Language Arts, Math, Middle/High School, Science, Secondary Elementary, Social Studies, Web2.0, Websites | Posted on 16-10-2008

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What it is:   Glogster is a great creativity site who’s tag line is “poster yourself”.  A ‘glog’ is basically an online poster web page.  Students can combine text, pictures, graphics, video, and audio to create an interactive online poster.  Glogster has a very simple to use interface.  The final glog can be hosted by Glogster or you can embed it into a wiki, blog, or class web site.  

 

How to integrate Glogster into the classroom:  Glogster is an awesome way for your students to display knowledge.  Instead of creating a poster for a presentation, students can create an interactive glog to display information.  Glogster can be used for history, math, language arts, book reports, science, social studies, and for public service announcements.  In fact, I am having a hard time coming up with a subject that couldn’t use Glogster in some capacity.  Students can create these online posters to display any knowledge or learning.  You really have to see this site, the creativity that it allows for will get your wheels spinning.  Once you start using Glogster with your students, you are going to think of all kinds of new applications.  Because Glogster has the ability to handle audio, students can create podcasts (using Audacity, Garageband, G-Cast or Gabcast) and upload the content into their glog.  So cool!  I really love that students can share their school work and accomplishments online with classmates, family, and friends.  Give your students an authentic audience and their work will dazzle you!

 

Tips: You can check out a quick sample glog that I created here about Internet Safety.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Glogster  in your classroom.

Comments (2)

Ray Kase said on 30-03-2009

We are having a debate about this site in our school district. Did you look at some of the content on this site? We saw inappropriate pictures all over the site and are blocking it because of that. Even the /edu site has links back into the .com site so we have not found a way to effectively make it available.

Since you are offering this in an “Internet Safety” discussion, I wondered what your thoughts were.
admin said on 30-03-2009

Ray,
I agree, some of the pictures are inappropriate in a school setting (particularly the emo and punk pictures). In my school, I give students the option of creating a project with Glogster but have the parameters that students don’t use pictures from either of these categories for a school project. I don’t think this falls into the category of an Internet Safety issue because the pictures are acceptable in some families (I am thinking of kids who wear EdHardy to school) and there is no chat like feature on the site. The students create a poster using graphics but they must be appropriate to the subject matter, images from the emo and punk categories do not support Internet Safety lesson. The age of students also needs to be taken into consideration when using Glogster with students. I only use Glogster as an option with my fifth grade students. Glogster may be more appropriate for 5th- 12th grade than for younger students because of the image considerations.

As for the edu site linking back to the .com site, you can request the .com site to be blocked in your district without it affecting the edu site. You just have to specifically blacklist the .com and whitelist the edu site.

Thanks for your question! Would love to know the outcome of the debate in your school district.

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