Kaily's Journey with Technology in the Classroom: SYMBA, WHO??? SYMBALOO !

Tech Tool of the week: Symbaloo

I am ashamed to admit that I had never heard of Symbaloo until this week. A Symbaloo virgin- that's me. It's been an exciting journey to discover this tech tool and imagine and dream about how I might use it in my classroom. In case you were like me and also hadn't heard of Symbaloo until this week, here is a quick synopsis of the tool. Basically, it's a fancy website collector space, kind of like a pinboard for websites. You might even say, it's a Pinterest for people who don't want to spend time creating pages, but just want to collect other's sites and pin them up. These pin boards are called webmixes. So, the exciting thing is that you can publish your webmixes. It's a very interesting idea because you can then search other people's webmixes and find interesting mixes of media.

So, how could this be used in the classroom? Here are a few ideas I came up with:

1) Students could create a webmix on a topic you are exploring. Eg. a webmix of different spoken word performances that they like, while you are studying poetry.

2) Teachers can create a webmix to accompany a certain unit. For example, check out this webmix I started for my grade 6 Math unit on fractions: Grade 6 Fractions

3) Use the site as a publishing place for students' work. Eg. Student made films could be uploaded as titles. The webmix could then be shared with parents.

4) As a teacher, use Symbaloo webmixes to find resources.

While there are many possibilities with Symbaloo, like any tool, there are a few drawbacks. One main drawback I found with the tool is that not many webmixes have actually been created. I was hoping that I would find some great webmixes already made by teachers in subject areas that were applicable to me. Not so. This is probably because there is a separate Symbaloo site for education, which people pay to use. Here is the link to Symbaloo EDUC.

Another drawback is that a teacher would have to make sure that the links in a webmix stay active. Over time, some of the links might die, and would become useless.

Over all, I think that Symbaloo as a tech tool for the classroom has lots of potential. I would be really curious to take a tour of the Symbaloo Educ site. It would be a very exciting tool if there were helpful teacher made resources there to access.

Here are a couple of Interesting Webmixes I found. Enjoy!