It's a Glog

A glog, apparently, is a multimedia, web-linked kind of fancy poster. Below is my attempt at one, meant to relate to Nella Larson's Quicksand as a jumping off point for thinking about or researching the cultural conversations, practices, and controversies related to the idea of education as a means to cultural/racial uplift (the Naxos section of Larson's novel).

What I like about Glogging:

1. It's creative (in both senses: artistic/expressive and productive). Even though it is digital, you produce something concrete (in a sense), which is share-able and which allows a kind of pride of accomplishment in the creation.
2. It's interactive, which invites you to think about your audience (how will you design your glog so that the links, images, sounds, and video are interesting, useful, informative, etc. to your audience?)
3. It's curatorial, which offers a sense of the active construction of knowledge and history, as well as a sense of changing meaning by changing comparisons or contrasts (i.e. a glog on Du Bois has a different meaning than a glog on Du Bois and Garvey).
4. It's research- and discovery-oriented. This offers the chance to construct knowledge and make (sometimes surprising) connections yourself. Discovering things can be fun, too, which has to be good for the classroom, right? I'll admit I was absurdly pleased to realize the reggae song I'd chosen to go with my Garvey slideshow (made with animoto) actually used the words "you lift me up from quicksand."

Questions about Glogging that I'm still thinking about:

1. Can you assess glogs? Based on what criteria?
2. Are they best used for introductions to material, concepts, etc.? Or how might they be used for intermediate explorations? Final projects?
3. How do you design glog assignments so that they are more bacon than sizzle? Like the Word Clouds I posted about earlier, making a glog could easily become a hands-on/minds-off activity (especially if you just post links to lengthy material that you haven't read or don't understand yet).