Symbaloo!

So I have a new obsession!  It’s creating Symbaloos.  Until this August I had never heard of Symbaloo before-much less made one.  Well I’m lucky enough to have some really fabulous unofficial mentors in my district and they are always inspiring me to try new things.

You might ask-what is a Symbaloo?  Well essentially it is collection of tiles that have links to other websites.  Its so much better than having a million bookmarks for different things.  And if you’re anything like me, I have a million tabs open on my computer because I never want to lose a great link I found.  Now this doesn’t totally take the place of a bookmark, but say you are wanting to compile a group of reading websites-make a symbaloo.  What if you want to compile a group of animal research websites that are safe for students?  Make a symbaloo!  You can make them for any category that you want.  You  can even share them with the public and browse other people’s webmixes.

What I love is that you can create a safe group of links for your students to use.  They aren’t that hard to make either.  You just need to check them every once in a while to make sure the links are still active.  I was a little intimidated at first but once I dipped in my toe I was hooked!  I’ve made 3 in the past 24 hours and have plans to make more.  Right now I’m sharing them with the teachers in my buildings so that they can bookmark them and let the students use them.  I’m hoping they like them and put them to good use!  I know I’ll be introducing them to my technology kiddos when we get done with our unplugged activities 🙂