Glogster

Glogster a. s., Inc, was founded in 2007 by Martin Santorcl, Patrik Prepsl, Roman Smola, Stanislav Šrámek and Tomáš Plojhar, with offices in Prague and Boston. They launched the first platform, Glogster.com also in 2007. This platform was initially promoted as a visual network, allowing users to express themselves via “graphic blogs” or “glogs”. However, in response to needs of educators incorporating Glogster into lessons and assignments, Glogster EDU (or edu.glogster.com) was set up alongside Glogster.com in 2009, offering a more secure and educational specific platform. Glogster EDU, has an annual subscription cost but gives educators a dashboard to provide instructions, templates and a private area for their class (es).[3]

The regular Glogster.com, the social network platform, was closed for new registrations and account access ceased in Feb 2015. After this the company focused solely on the Glogster EDU platform. There is, however, a personal type license available for single users. The platform has grown into a worldwide community in over 200 countries, with over 1.9 million teacher accounts with over 17 million student accounts who have created more than 25 million educational glogs, out of 45 million total glogs on the service.[1]

Glogster EDU is used as a learning and teaching tool to foster higher order thinking skills. Creating posters or glogs allows learners to engage closely with a subject, exercising critical thinking and research skills in selecting appropriate media and creative skills in structuring and arranging the finished piece. Glogster is being used in place of traditional poster assignments and demonstrates how versatile such a poster-creation tool can be when partnered with solid teaching pedagogy and teacher creativity. The use of Glogster, motives and excites students to do their work.[4] A study showed that the usage of the Glogster EDU educational platform develops necessary competences, such as, communication skills, creativity and intellectual curiosity, critical and systematized thinking, information and media skills, collaborative and interpersonal skills, problem identification, formulation, and solving and social responsibility.[5]

In 2015, Glogster launched the GATE (Global Ambassadors for Technology in Education) program, focused on offering Glogster educators training materials and certifications, as well as recruiting a small group of representatives to assist in promoting Glogster online and in their local areas.

In 2016, 2017 & 2018 Glogster was the tool used for the NASA Spinoff Promotion And Research Challenge - OPSPARC. The aim of the challenge was for students to create NASA inspired spinoff ideas and show them by creating a "Glog,"an online multimedia poster via Glogster. There were three levels of the competition- the Elementary School Category for students grades 3-6, the Middle School Category for students grades 7-8 and the High School Category for students grades 9-12. Students were instructed to research spinoffs found in their homes or schools, and just like an engineer, use an engineering design process to take an everyday object and use it in new ways that will solve a problem learning invaluable STEM inspired skills. Students will show off their work by using videos, drawings, pictures and text and submitting them in the form of a glog.[6]