Tech Thursday: Symbaloo
Welcome to the very first post for Tech Thursday! I want to use these posts to introduce you all to tech tools you can use in your classrooms or beyond. This week I want to focus on a website I recently found out about. I have been using it in the Media Center to organize content for my classes. I think you could easily use it the same way in your classrooms to organize content based on unit topics. Check it out. It's free! It's called Symbaloo.
So, what is Symbaloo you ask?
Symbaloo is a website that allows you to save links to online content (i.e. websites, articles, photos, videos, etc.) in one place and access them from anywhere you have internet access. You can just log in to symbaloo from any device whenever you need them. There are other sites that do this, but Symbaloo's design is what I really like. The site uses tiles to store the links, and you can organize the tiles any way you wish. It might look like this...
Each of the tiles links to a piece of web content. They are organized in groups and also by color. Once you create a tile, you can drag it and drop it in the grouping you want. You can create different tabs within Symbaloo to save content based on instructional units. For example, below is a picture of my Library Orientation page. I use these links at the beginning of the school year. They're all saved here, so I don't lose them or have to look them up each year. Next to the Library Orientation tab, is the "FALL" tab. There I'm keeping all of the links I use with my classes during our unit on Fall.
Another neat option is how you can embed Symbaloo webmixes into your webpage. Just create the perfect webmix, Symbaloo provide the code, and you just copy+paste it onto your own site! You could use this on your school webpage to provide links for students to use at home!
You can learn the basics by watching the following YouTube video from Symbaloo's YouTube page. There are many other great videos and tutorials on their page. Check it out! If you have trouble viewing the videos at school, you may have to try them from home. You know we have some internet issues here...
Another great thing about Symbaloo is that you can share your webmixes either publicly or privately with your friends on Symbaloo. This allows for great collaboration among grade levels or beyond. Let me know what you think!
