Rock Cycle Glogster
The creative web tool, Glogster, is one of many digital tools teachers have at their disposal to help them cultivate much of what Howard Gardner advocates in the way of intellectual development in his book, Five Minds for the Future. The "glog" I composed for this class supports our exploration of "the rock cycle." This teacher-created glog directly addresses Third Grade Science Standard 3: Earth's materials can be broken down and/or combined into different materials such as rocks, minerals, rock cycle, formation of soil, and sand—some of which are used for human activities. For students, this glog provides much of what Gardner calls for in the development of a disciplined mind...namely, multiple entry points to engaging and understanding the factual information of a specific discipline (Gardner, 2007). Gardner states that authentic creativity can occur only after mastery of a discipline has been achieved. "Mastering" the key concepts of the rock cycle will provide students the background they need to compose more innovative, authentic, truly creative projects that reflect the depth of their content understanding. This initial glog will serve as a concrete model for the students as they build their own glogs involving any number of content areas. Both teacher and student-created glogs will serve as great independent reading and study centers where students can engage the information in their own way on their own time. Outside the confines of direct instruction, students can engage, review, and extend their study of any particular content through a well-constructed and creative glog. Reading others' glogs supports Reading, Writing, and Communicating Standard #4: Research and Reasoning: 1) Research a topic and sharing findings are often done with others, d) develop supporting visual information, as well as Standard #2: Engage in a wide-range of non-fiction reading to solve problems and judge quality of ideas.
The teacher-created example serves as a foundation for content mastery that will scaffold student understanding so that they can eventually create their own informative glogs. Glogs truly support synthesis of information, and creativity naturally flows in an environment in which synthesis is supported and developed. Students must synthesize a great deal of information to create their own glogs...the lines between synthesis and creativity are frequently non-existent (Gardener, 2007). As students acquire a repertoire of publishing options ranging from Powerpoint, Prezi, Glogster, etc., they will use critical thinking skills to choose which best suits the purposes of their presentation, as well as which one feeds their own personal creative muse.
In his book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, Daniel Pink states that one of the most powerful methods of communicating an idea is through the use of narrative (Pink, 2006). Young children often struggle with making narrative "meaningful." They are masters at the "bed-to-bed," but getting them to think critically about audience and writing about interesting or exciting things can be a challenge. Glogster would be a great planning tool providing visual support for the idea of "exciting" events. I plan to use the program with my students to help them map-out their stories before committing to writing. It would be very difficult to write something mundane in the jazzy and eye-popping text boxes offered by Glogster. This use would support Reading and Writing Standard #3: A writing process is used to plan, draft, revise, and edit written work. The kids would LOVE ensuring their words support the graphic they have chosen to plan within.
A person could easily use 500 words to describe all the ways Glogster could be used to support the Common Core. What is exciting about programs like this is that they have the power to convert a classroom into a "hot bed of creativity and innovation." Historically, great thinking and cultural revolutions (of the positive kind) have had their genesis in such intellectual centers as Athens, Florence, Vienna, Silicon Valley (Gardner, 2007). What a wonderful challenge it is to re-imagine a classroom as a just such a center!
Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Pink, Daniel. (2006). A whole new mind: moving from the information age to the conceptual age. New York:
Penguin.
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