Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Tech Tip Tuesday: Symbaloo


Welcome back for another Tech Tip Tuesday. This is one that will make your computer lab or computer station time run much more smoothly! No more long lists of URLs that students need to type into the browser, or having to create a brand-new webpage to collect links for each computer project.

Symbaloo allows you to keep all your links handy and available, and makes it easy for students to visit approved webpages without having to type in URLS. You can create new tabs for different "mixes" to help you stay organized. For example, if you're doing a project on Owls, you might create a mix with all your owl links in one place. You can also easily create a new mix for next week's topic! See this sample webmix all about Owls.

A webmix I recently created for participants in a workshop I was leading

Even better, as you find new links that fit your mix, you can continue adding to the mix to build a library of links that are relevant to the topic of your mix. The webmixes are available to you (and students) until you decide to delete them. When a link is no longer good, it's super easy to remove!

Can be used for:

  • Research 
  • Managing Computer Station Time
  • Creating a classroom desktop
  • Cataloging links for units of study

Why this is great for ELLs:
ELLs, especially newcomers and those less familiar with computers often find it difficult, time-consuming and frustrating to type in URLs (and often have trouble recognizing a mistake in a URL they've typed in). Using Symbaloo allows students to spend more time on the web learning and less time typing in URLs. It also helps ensure that students are staying on task and using teacher-approved websites.




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