8.03.2009

Glogging

When I first heard the term glogging, I was so confused! I had never heard of glogs and I thought it might just be some off version of blogging. However, as I explored and found out what glogging really is, I was pretty impressed. It is fun, easy to do, and is another way to express your creativity. I would describe glogging as blogging through pictures. A lot of people express themselves better through pictures and through short texts, rather than long elaborate blog entries. Glogster.com provides a great way to do this. The glogs that you make can be referred to as "posters." They are big enough that the screen has to scroll down to see the whole thing. You can put pretty much whatever you want onto your poster : music, pictures, videos, and all sorts of designs.
I learned to make glogs by trial and error. I think the website definitely could have been more user friendly, there were a lot of things that could have had better instructions. Also, there weren't really any tutorials on youtube, I think that glogging is a relatively new thing; I had never heard of it before. Glogging is useful in that you can express your creativity, however, I also discovered another use for it when searching for a Youtube video. Glogging can be used as an educational tool, something that is completely relevant to my life. There is a whole separate section called Glogster EDU that can be used in the classroom.


This is a short video that says something about glogging. The information given is not really relevant, however behind the words the video shows lots of examples of glogs that people have done.

This is a link to a short video on how to embed a Youtube video into a glog. There are no words, but it shows how to do it.
Here are step-by-step instructions to get you started. I will include pictures from my own glog that I created.
2. Click on the button that says “Become a glogger now!” This is the screen that will appear:
3. Glogging is free. It doesn’t really give you directions so you kind of just have to go for it. Although it does tell you that if you want to delete any of the elements already provided, all you have to do is just click on the element and then click the red trash can that pops up.
4. An important part of the glogging is using the magnet tool. The magnet tool is located on the left hand side of the screen. The magnet tool has “graphics, text, image, video, sound, and wall.” Everything that you want to put onto your glog is located in these tools. Graphics are clip-art looking pictures that you can add to your glog. Text is where you can add words to your glog. The image button allows you to upload and use your own photos, or grab pictures off of tinypic.com if you have an account. The video button enables you to upload a video into your glog. Sound allows you to add a sound clip or a song file from your computer, and the wall button allows you to change the background of your poster.
5. Clicking on the wall button gave me options for choosing a background for my poster. There is a gallery, you can upload a photo, or you can choose a solid color. In the gallery, there are categories to choose from to find a background. I chose to use a flower background to keep with my summer theme. Click on whatever background you want and then hit the pink “use it!” button. Your glog backround automatically changes. Then by clicking on "page wall" you can change the color of the outside border of the page. The page wall also has the option of uploading photos, using the gallery options, or using a solid color. I chose a bright pink color.
6. I started playing around with my poster by clicking on the graphic button. It gave me what looked like clip art images that I could add to my poster. That is not what I wanted, so I then hit the upload button on the top of the screen to upload a photo. After I hit upload, it allowed me to upload photos from my computer to add to my poster. Once my photos uploaded, they did not appear on my page. I found them by clicking on the magnet tool on the right hand side of the screen where it says “images”. You can get pictures by uploading your own or by using tinypic pictures. I uploaded several pictures of this summer. Your pictures will then appear on the screen in a small version. Click on the picture you would like to add, and it shows a bigger version in the box on the right. Hit the “use it!” button and it appears on your poster.
7. Once the pictures are on your poster, you can do multiple things to them. You can resize them, rotate them, delete them, put it behind other pictures, put it in front of other pictures, or clone your picture. I found the button that allows you to put pictures in front of others was helpful, as a lot of my pictures were overlapping since it was a collage. You can also click the frame tab and add a frame to your picture before you put in on your collage. I chose not to do this because I felt like the frames took up a lot of space.
8. Once I dragged and resized all my pictures to where I wanted them, I decided to add some text. To add text, click on the text section of the magnet tool. When you add text, you can use simple text or you can choose from a variety of borders/backgrounds to write your text into. Just select the background you want and it will show up on your poster. I decided to put my text with a fun yellow spikey background. Then click the edit button to add your text. By clicking the Ab1 button you can edit font, size, and color of the text. Change what you want to from your text and then hit “apply.” Afterwards, hit the okay button.
9. To add sound, you simply click on the sound button and you can upload sounds from iTunes or any other sound files you have. You hit the upload button and then select a file to upload. I chose the song Summertime by Kenny Chesney. Once a song is selected, click on it and then hit “use it!”
10. The song will be put into your poster. It will show up as a pink circle with a play symbol in the middle. If you click on the symbol, editing selections come up. To make the song play automatically, you hit the edit button. Then click on the button to the very right that looks like gears. Once you click the button, you select autoplay and adjust the volume to what you would like it to be. Hit the apply button and click okay. You can then hide the button by clicking the “behind” button and sliding it behind a picture. I hid mine behind the text.
11. You can also add videos, add links to media files that are online, and “grab” things that you record with a webcam and a microphone.
12. When you are done, name your glog. The box to do this is at the top of the screen. All you do is type in the name. I named my glog “Summertime.”
13. Clicking on the preview button shows you how other people will view your glog. From there, you can chose to go back to edit and make any changes you want.
14. If you are okay with the way your glog looks, go back to edit and then click on the save and publish button. There are three ways to save your glog: As a gift, as a greeting, and as a normal glog. A gift can be “opened” on a certain date, a greeting can be sent to your friends. Saving it as a classic glog allows the glogger community to view your poster. You can also send it as a gift or greeting. I saved mine as a classic glog. I also selected the category "people" to put my glog into. You can add a tag your glog to make it easy to find. I added the tag of ek summer. Then click save & publish.
15. After you save your first glog, it will ask you to register or log in so other people can see the poster you just made. I am obviously a new glogger, so I registered. They ask you for a nickname, a password, and you have to confirm you are older than 13 years old, but the entire registration takes 5 minutes max.
16. Once you register, you have now made a glogster profile. You can enter a mood, sort of like a facebook status, send and receive messages, and have friends. When you scroll down the page you can see the all the blogs you created. You can also embed and link your glogs into other things by simply copying and pasting the URL to do it.
Here is my final product: It should be embedded, but if for some reason it doesn't work, here is the link to my glog:
I would suggest just going to the website and becoming accustomed to glogger. The more you play and explore, the better you get. It isn't really all that hard to use and you can make some pretty cool things! Glogging is something I had never heard of, I definitely didn't think I would ever do it, but I am glad I did!

1 comment:

  1. Wow, what a nice and informational blog. I have not heard about glogging before but now I know what it is and how I could use it. Great information and so many pictures and links!

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