Integrating technology in classroom is a common practice and what else is common is the trouble of managing the endless favorite and reliable web resources that educators use.
Though there are many bookmark tools out, there are some reasons why any educator would pick SymbalooEDU over another way to manage their resources.
SymbalooEDU, the visual resource management tool helps educators and students organize and share the best of the web. Users save their resources in the cloud and access them from anywhere with any device. With features like embedded content, group tiles and sequenced tiles, educators around the world are creating lesson plans, research assignments and personalize learning in many different ways.
1. Lesson Plans with Webmixes
The distinct feature the tool offers is one of the main reasons for the likeability of the tool. Educators using this tool get to create webmix. A webmix is a collection of resources that educators refer or may want to send across to students. Symbaloo will generate a link for the user that further can be shared with others to take them straight to the webmix. Teachers can create lesson plans for individual subjects with different webmixes and share them with students.
“SymbalooEDU webmixes provide a safe and easy online learning environment for our elementary students. They are so visual and easy to use. It has made bookmarking online educational resources for my students so much more organized and visually appealing. I maintain over 3000 links on another bookmarking service, with Symbaloo I am able to pull only the relevant links from the giant list to display to students. Also, I can change a tile easily at any time to suit our monthly computer lessons. I really like that I can customize the graphics of the tiles and the wallpaper background. Also, embedding Google Docs, YouTube and other online resources is a huge bonus!”
– Shelley Owen, Educator
Amy Cobb (@acobb), of Shorecrest Preparatory School in Florida, uses Symbaloo to create her interactive lesson plans and share them with her class.
2. Personal Learning Network
This is another feature of the tool that helps it stand out. Educators as well as students can create their own personal learning network. We can see how the digital citizenship is gaining popularity because the importance is undeniable. Whenever web is integrated in education, students get prone to the ill effects of the web.
In this scenario, SymbalooEDU is a great tool. Teachers can be at ease and not worry about the student activity as students can customize their own learning space. Students can create their own Symbaloo pages with their most used websites, such as their school email account, personal blog, social networking sites, classroom blog, and school website. They can curate content from their research for a classroom project by embedding from various platforms in a webmix. They can easily access all their resources without having to go to all over the web.
Randy Hollinger (@randyhollinger), a middle school teacher in Florida, uses Symbaloo for his students to create their own online portfolio to store their work and share it with their parents throughout the year. He likes that Symbaloo is a tool that the students can grow with and take with them after the school year has ended.
Ann Leaness (@aleaness), High School Technology Teacher and Edcamp Philly co-organizer, used Symbaloo as an ice-breaker assignment to have her students create and present a Symbaloo Webmix around their favorite topic/s and has now used Symbaloo to take her class completely paperless.
3. Curriculum Mapping
Teachers always have a hard time keeping up with ever changing educational standards. Teachers have to work extra hours to keep a track of all such things in such cases teachers can collaborate and share their Webmixes with each other helping other educators, work together and work smart. This collaborating features not only helps educators with curricular mapping, it also adds to their PLN thereby giving them access to not only many other resources that would help them with their profession but also connecting them with many other experts from the same industry.
Some other features that would make you love the SymbalooEDU:
– Cloud based: All the resources are saved in the cloud so they can be accessed over any device. Also, you can sync your multiple devices.
– Free of cost!
– Search the web directly from within the app.
– Share resources with Twitter, mail or Bluetooth.
– One click takes teachers or students to important websites and resources.
– Provides a safe web environment for student learning.
You can also check, Top Symbaloo web tools for students.
Try out this tool and share your experience with us.
Resource Referred for Citation: http://www.bishopireton.org/document.doc?id=1087
