UPDATE: Glogster Project Speedbump

So- this is pretty much unprecedented- 2 blog posts in one week. Usually I wouldn't be so on top of it, but today something happened that simply had to be blogged about. Glogster screwed up my life. Really.

I'm in the midst of doing my fieldwork at an elementary school. I've been at it for 3 weeks now, but this week was my first week with kids. the first 2 weeks were spent designing and setting up some really awesome projects with the librarian. One project will see the students researching and then creating a glog about life in the swamp. Accounts were set up- I was stoked to find out that we (the librarian and I) could each set up a free account and add enough students to get the project going for this semester. I created a demo glog and was pretty excited about it. This week we introduced the project to the students who were really, really excited!

Then, today, disaster struck. I logged in to change the passwords for the students and couldn't get to my student list. Why? Well, because as of today Glogster Basic no longer exists.

Yup, in order to continue this project I would have to upgrade to Teacher Light ($29.95/year and we would need 2 accounts) or Teacher Premium ($99/year). Even doing the month free upgrade won't work because this project spans 6 weeks... maybe I can squish it into 4, but that will put a lot of pressure on the kids to learn how to create a glog and actually do it in a short amount of time (roughly 3-4 classes what with Thanksgiving getting in the way and all).

Oh and for all my IST611 buddies- that project Erin and I turned in just last week? Yeah, it's kind of inaccurate now. The tutorial holds up, but some of the other information, especially in regards to the different account levels no longer applies. The strengths and weaknesses of Glogster would change too, since one big bonus was the ability to have free access for the most basic application. You couldn't do much with Teacher Basic, but it was enough to give students a little taste of what could possibly be done. Thank goodness Task One had us looking at alternatives- I may need to tap into those now!

So now what? Well, to start I have to get a hold of my librarian who is out of town for a few days and then try to figure out if there is a way to salvage this project or if we need to come up with soemthing totally different despite having already started the project with several classes. Needless to say I'm not overly thrilled with Glogster. They gave 5 days notice, which, because I only teach 2 days a week fell during the time I was not at school and therefore not working on Glogster. So for me, I got zero days notice. Not even an email to my actual email address (which I provided on account set up). 

I guess the moral of the story here is that you never know when a speedbump is going to be laid out in front of you. This is probably what life in the library is like all the time, so it's good to get used to it as quickly as possible. Also, have a back up plan. I better go get working on Plan B now.

UPDATE: So, despite Glogster messing my Wednesday up, I have to say I'm really impressed with the way it's gone from there. You'll note below in my comments that Glogster responded to this here post. Well, technically Jennifer from Glogster responded. Turns out that while I can't do it exactly the way I want to there are ways I can still get this project rolling and allow the kids to create some awesome glogs. It may take me a few more steps, and a little more time, but the fact that someone took the time to make some suggestions (and answer more questions via email) speaks volumes for the company. I get that they can't continue to provide everything for free (although, lets face it, that would be awesome) and that was never my issue. In fact, when I'm in a position to do so, I will probably pay for an account. It just doesn't make sense at this time, for this project. Now, thanks to Jennifer and her chance encounter with my blog, I've got a handful of things to take to my librarian and some feasible ways to keep this project going. So, in short, kudo's to Glogster. It's great to hear from companies, especially when you are frustrated!