Queen of Glogster

Our school believes in e-portfolios and student-led conferences, but a successful approach has been just beyond our reach the past several years. So we’re 1) planning on bribing parents to come to parent night with hot dogs, and 2) switching to GlogsterEDU for our e-portfolio platform.

And since I led the Glogster charge, they let me be in charge.

I’ve learned a few things with our school’s adoption of GlogsterEDU Premium, first and foremost that Deena Kelly is awesome and will help you day or night, repeatedly if necessary.

Also, despite a deep, bone-chilling fear of losing my precious glogs I’ve designed of late and/or students’ accounts and hard work, I’ve found you can safely switch licenses just by applying a new license code. Your old license turns back into an invitation, and you lose nothing, and students, classes, and glogs can be migrated between licenses.

Bonus: adding a teacher with existing students adds student accounts free, and you can still control these accounts until you transfer them to the administrator overlord/lady

However, when you submit to an administrator overlord (or lady) by joining a school license, you can no longer add your own students, access student accounts as students, delete or edit their accounts, or change their nicknames or passwords. But at least you can make your own classes still and edit students’ portfolios. And you still have the option to add a student glog to your class when you have actually opened the glog (you can find it before the comments section).

Portfolios are, by the way, pretty keen. They’re a quick, easy, and quite attractive way to flip through student glogs. Plus, if you have published a portfolio, the link doesn’t go away, even if you delete the student account!

Part of our new e-portfolio campaign is that parents can comment on the glogs before they get to parent night, show the family leader, get the report card, and go. I discovered that parents cannot comment on the portfolio, though they can comment on individual glogs or the student’s profile. Also they will need to have an account and be logged in to comment.

I have approximately 2 complaints total: “Grab” video and audio tools: not so good. Also, I wish there was a batch password change option.

Other than that, I’m pretty enthused about becoming the e-portfolio overlady at my school.