Heard of Symbaloo? Symbaloo.com is decidedly one of my favourite bookmarking sites! Let me tell you about it. First let me show you an example. This is a collection of National Geographic e-book readers collected on a Symbaloo webmix for easy access http://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/natgeobooks
What is Symbaloo?It is a free visual bookmarking site – a fun, simple and colourful way to organize and store all your digital resources in different categories in the cloud. It allows you to curate content in the form of ‘tiles’ on a named ‘webmix’ and easily share that content with others. It can be a very useful and attractive classroom tool.
How does it work?You collect your favourite websites and store them together categorised in the form of tiles, with or without writing on them. They are stored on a webmix which you have named accordingly. Each tile links to the Internet. There are many ways to share these webmixes. You have the option to share them with others. by sending them as a link through email, or through social media. You can also embed your webmixes in another site or publish them publicly in the Symbaloo gallery.
This 2.30min video from the Symbaloo YouTube page explains Symbaloo in a nutshell.
This 10min video from Ms Computer Teacher shows you step-by step how to use Symbaloo.
What is the difference between Symbaloo free and Symbaloo EDU?
There are two types of Symbaloo accounts. Symbaloo free account is best for individual use. The free account gives you all the features that Symbaloo has to offer. SymbalooEDU Premium (paid) is best for classrooms, schools, districts or state wide educational purposes. A premium account gives you an admin panel that helps you distribute and manage all your digital resources in one place.
In the 11.45 minute video below Matt Gomez the acclaimed Kindergarten teacher shows how he uses Symbaloo EDU to manage his resources.
How can you use Symballoo in the classroom?
The Edublogger has a fantastic post on Symbaloo that gives eleven ways to use Symbaloo effectively. Here are are some of the poinbters they mention but do go to the original post for all the great examples:
1. Share classroom links with others
2. Customize lesson plans
3. Embed a webmix in your classroom blog for your class and share it
4. Conduct PD using Symbaloo
5. Organise didigtal portfolios for your class on Symbaloo.
6. Use Symbaloo for video playlists to share with your students and colleagues.
Who do I follow on Symbaloo?1. If you are a Foundation Phase teacher Matt Gomez, Kindergarten teacher is a must. He is co-founder and organizer of EdcampDallas as well as moderator of #Kinderchat and he uses Symbaloo to share Kinderchat resources filled with eBooks, fun songs and videos for younger students.His profile can be found at http://www.symbaloo.com/profile/mattgomez
2. For Foundation Phase teachers the #kinderchat collection is amazing. Find them at http://edu.symbaloo.com/profile/kinderchat
3. However, whatever you teach you’ll find suitable people to follow.
Why not get started with Symbaloo today? It will soon become a favourite as it is with me…
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