Symbaloo

I wanted my first grade students to feel more comfortable going online and using certain websites. The Symbaloo account has greatly impacted my students. They feel more comfortable going on the computers in our classroom because Symbaloo controls what they are able to view.  The students are able to go on to many different sites with ease. Symbaloo is a page that you can customize that lets users add their most important links in a format that is super easy to use. There are icons or logos that you create and just with the click of a button you are linked right into that website. You can drag and drop items to organize them in a way that is convenient for you. You can also set this page as your homepage. When my students click on safari, Symbaloo comes up and they're able to choose from a variety of different tiles of websites to visit. For example, my students frequent Starfall.com, I created a tile that they just click on and it brings them directly to the sight. Every computer in our computer lab now has Symbaloo. This allows for us as a class to go to the computer lab twice a week and for the students to access a variety of literacy and math websites.

This online visual bookmark organizer also impacts my teaching. It helps me to be better organized and have all of my resources available to me. There are a couple of tiles that I use within my classroom, like Discover Ed, and Brain pop Jr.. Having Symbaloo on my desktop saves me from typing in websites when I need them and also from saving them into my favorites. All my important sights are there when I need them, no matter my location. It also makes me feel very comfortable knowing that my students know how to access Symbaloo and that they are using 21st Century Skills.