Wednesday 25 April 2012

4 things that make "Glogster" better than "GlogsterEDU"

We have been using GlogsterEDU for about the past 12 months now, while the initial reaction was great and many of our classes started using it right away, the use of it has died off significantly. Many teachers said that they grew frustrated with it over time, while some of these issues no doubt were to do with our network stability, it was not until I compared the "Glogster" and "GlogsterEDU" that I wondered are we really getting the most for of our education subscription.
I noticed 4 pretty obvious features that are in the standard platform which I would highly recommend being integrated into the education platform:
Portrait & landscape templates VS one size fits all:
Left: standard platform w/ portrait & landscape templates. Right: EDU platform w/ no templates.
Glogster's catch-cry "poster yourself" says it all here. Why wouldn't you  give the education subscribers the ability to create landscape posters?

Sleek interface VS cluttered & kiddish interface: 
Left: standard platform w/ sleek interface. Right: EDU platform w/ kiddish elements.
OK, so I get the EDU platform is aimed at children, however I think the teddy bear and the loading "donut" give the application a fairly immature feel. It is also interesting to compare the differences in the "dashboards" in each of platforms, the EDU one is considerable more cluttered, however this could be because the platform offers more features such as projects and classes that need to go here. The standard platform is sleek and stylish, and because of this the interface is more simplistic to use.


"Private Print" button VS no obvious print button:
Left: standard platform w/ private print button. Right: edu platform w/o print button (users must right click their Glog and select "Print Glog")
Once again the users of this application are creating a poster, it would be great if you could easily print it. A user should not have to figure out that they need to right click the Glog to be able to get the print option.

Embed option VS one size fits all (or does it?):
Left: standard platform w/ three embed options. Right: EDU platform with no options.
Have you ever tried embedding a EDU Glog into your blog? It doesn't quite work as the sizing is a bit too big. Of course you can always fiddle around with the HTML code, but should you really expect students to know or have to do this? In the standard platform you get three options when embedding; Full size (960x1300), blog size (560x768), feed (sidebar) size (360x488).

2 comments:

  1. Hi there,

    Thank you for highlighting Glogster on your blog. I do want to point out that all the features you mentioned (Glog templates, sleek interface, print button, and embed options) ARE coming to Glogster EDU within the next few months, in addition to many, many more features tailored to education.

    We decided to debut these new features on Glogster.com rather than Glogster EDU in order to straighten out any bugs before releasing them to the education market. We value our educational subscribers and realize that reliability is a huge priority for you. We want to ensure that we have the most reliable product possible before releasing it to our teachers and students, and we're working hard to get the new version to you ASAP!

    Please rest assured that these features (along with advanced Glog editing, media searching, mobile versions, and more!) are on their way to Glogster EDU. Feel free to email me with any questions or feedback at jennifer.wineke at glogster dot com.

    Happy Glogging!
    Jennifer, Glogster EDU

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Jennifer! Can't wait for these new updates, sounds exciting.

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