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Three weeks ago I had never heard of SymbalooEDU. I went to a professional development class feeling not so tech enabled with my head literally in the clouds and left with a free social bookmarking service in the cloud! Clouds now have a whole new meaning to me! SymbalooEDU has changed my life for the better.
With SymbalooEDU teachers can organize and share the best of the web with their students. To me SymbalooEDU is an amazing tool. To the right of this page is a sample picture of what SymbalooEDU looks like. SymbalooEDU is a free educational tool that gives teachers and students a way to save their on-line resources in the cloud with access from any technological device, such as: an iPad, iPhone, MAC, and/or personal computer. Each tile on the SymbalooEDU grid (actually called a gallery) is a website, app, or a resource. As a busy teacher who always wants to give their students the best possible lessons, SymbalooEDU is not only a life saver but also a time saver. Now with a click of a button, the classroom teacher can share websites with students and colleagues. There will no longer be gaps in instructional time while the teacher types in web addresses manually. Just one click and the whole class is together on the correct website. There will no longer be the worry of advertising getting into what the student sees. The best part is that all resources in the SymbaloEDU gallery are saved in the cloud. This means that they can be accessed by any device in or out of school. SymbalooEDU resources automatically sync between a user’s ipad, iPhone,Mac, and personal computer.
Again, please look at the sample SymbalooEDU picture above. Each color coded section which will actually have pictures or graphics on it from the website, demonstrates how each teacher or user can organize their SymbalooEDU gallery. This actually has a name called: a webmix. Simply stated, a webmix is a collection of links around a specific topic. My personal teaching gallery is actually made up of six webmixes: lessons, typing practice, behavior, presentations, teacher made websites, and music to teach by. Webmixes can be published for other teachers to find and use. Symbaloo EDU is very user friendly. I am not a strong tech person, but even I was able to quickly and easily add my frequently used websites to my SymbalooEDU gallery. It is very simple to search the web from the SymbalooEDU gallery. There you can find your favorite websites that you frequently use and place them on a tile in your gallery.
Another great feature of SymbalooEDU is there is a tile where you can create or obtain lesson plans in the marketplace. There is even a Symbaloo basic certification lesson plan!
Since I'm not an expert of SymbalooEDU my recommendation is to hop on over to http://www.symbalooedu.com to learn more about it.
Soon you will be just like me: a teacher in a cloud! Best of luck.
