Frankly, I shudder when my son asks the question…”Hey dad, can you get me some bristol board?”.  Another poster on the way.

In all my years working in the fields of Engineering, media and project management, I never used or benefited from the having a poster to communicate information.  In schools, they usually are little more than busy work designed to keep students (and parents!) pacified with a basic element in the traditional narrative of education.

Lately, we have seen educators introducing technology to digitize the process as students created collages of images and text digitally.  While this could conceivably be of some benefit in teaching basic computer skills and the efficiencies of digitizing previous practice, it still limits students abilities to collaborate and share their work with an authentic audience.

I recently was introduced to Glogster through twitter (I only wish I could remember who!).  This web-based tool provides an opportunity for students to create and share digital “posters” which they create themselves, either as individuals or in collaborative groups.  These products can include not just text and images, but also hyperlinks and audio.  They can be made to be highly interactive and can be shared via email, through the glogster site itself or embedded into blogs or wikis.

Below is a quick example of a “poster” that I created in just a few minutes.  There are hundreds of much more interesting examples on the site.

I see many uses for this in classrooms as students connect and communicate their new knowledge to an authentic global audience.  From poetry and music to equations and earth science, students could make wonderful media collages.

Check out this collection of Animal Glogs from an elementary school.

What kinds of opportunities to you see?

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