Symbaloo - Simple, Symbolic Web Launch Pages for Students?

As a special education teacher who believes that technology is truly an effective way to reach and teach my students, I am always looking for tools to help present information and resources in a way that addresses my students' learning styles and needs.

I teach young children with autism. My students are very visual learners. So, when I want to use a collection of online resources with my class, I want to present them visually.

My solution for this would be symbaloo. Symbaloo is a new visual way to navigate the Internet, which is frequently being used in education.

After creating a FREE account, educators can easily setup "webmixes", which they would be able to access from any computer with Internet access. A "webmix" is a page full of tiles, which visually represent web sites. Symbaloo features a number of customization options (background color, tile color, symbol or upload custom thumbnail, text labels, etc.).

"Webmixes" either can be kept private or shared. The options for sharing include public (add to Symbaloo gallery) or with friends (via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Hyves, or using a custom URL).

Symbaloo is great for students to use on tablets (iPads), interactive whiteboards, touchscreens, and regular computers. For an example of how Symbaloo could be used in the special education classroom, here is my IWBs in Special Ed webmix.

- Jeremy

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sqworl.com

Recently, I'd seen, via Twitter, a site that allowed you to create thumbnails pictures of sites, a visual bookmark you might say. While, I'm not sure if Sqworl.com is the site I originally saw, but it is a great site for the purpose. I decided to search Larry Ferlazzo's Website of the Day, he has a post of the best sites for bookmarking.

What I found was Sqworl.com. Sqworl is a very easy site to use. Once you register you can create groups, a group is a page full of links. Once you put in the link it will create a thumbnail image of the site. The thumbnails will be saved and a link will be created that you can share. Once each group is saved, the link will take you to a page full of thumbnails! It's a great way to allow students the opportunity to choose something they might like to look at or do. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Patrick

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How did you know how to do that?

So, one question I get repeatedly is "How did you know how to do that?", and I never have an answer for them.  I guess being a self-admitted techie (pronounced geek) I just do.  But there are several things I can suggest to help a person get to the point that they can do things themselves.




1. Play - lots of time I just learn to do things by trying to do it.  That may sound weird, but that's the truth.  Usually all I do is sit down the program and try and do something.  Set a small goal of something you've never done, and just look around the menus until you find out how to do it.


2. Use Help - OK, so as I admitted in #1, I don't know how to do everything, but the help file does.  Most help files are extremely useful, and are easily searchable.


3. Use the Internet - There are a million and one groups on the internet, and most of them are helpful. Find a group (there are lots at Yahoo Groups) and subscribe.  Depending on the group you will get 1-25 e-mails per day on a topic.  You will have the opportunity ask questions, and read all other questions that are asked.


4. Save your information - So you've joined a list, but don't know what to do with all the e-mails.  One great option is Gmail.  Gmail is a webmail client, where you never have to delete an single e-mail.   You can sort your mail, label the mail, and archive for as long as you want.  Then when you need an e-mail you can search for it very easily.


5. Bookmark/tag everything - I never have time to fully read each website I find information on. 




Sometimes I get 5 - 10 websites as part of the groups I belong too, and being busy I never have enough time to really read each website, so I use Del.icio.us (see my previous post) and bookmark/tag those sites then when I have a topic I need help with I'll go there and search for sites to use.  This way, I don't feel like I miss anything when I get a website from a group, I can always find it later.


These are just a few little things.  Doing some little things like this can really help you answer that question for you "How did you know how to do that?"  Keep watching for a few more!




-  Patrick

del.icio.us

One tool that I have found extremely useful in the past few years is Del.icio.us.  This website is a great place to store your favorite websites.  Basically you put in the address of a site you want to save, and type in several words, tags, to describe the site, that will help you remember it.  So, if you are interested in remembering a site like GMail - you might type in mail, email, google, contacts, etc...


Once you have input several sites you can then search them.  You can look at all the tags for say math, or education that you have saved and check out the site.  Also you can click on a tag - let's say math - and see all the sites that other people have tagged as math.  You can discover other sites that might help you find what you are looking for.


Check out my Del.icio.us site - Patrobyn - Education - here.  You can search the tags on the right side of the screen, or you can search the site using the search bar at the top.




-  Patrick