Organize Online Resources with Symbaloo
“How can I keep all of the resources
that I want to use in my classroom
together in one place? I want the
students to be able to have access
to them at school and at home.”
share resources, such as social bookmarking and curating websites.
In the past, I updated my library
website several times each week. I
made sure to keep the links current
so that teachers and students had
everything they needed for library
and technology classes. Every time
I found a new author website or
web 2.0 tool, I would include it.
It was time consuming, and students
and teachers would miss updates.
I went searching for the ideal solu-
tion and found Symbaloo, a personal
bookmark management tool that al-
lows users to organize and easily share
their online resources with colleagues
and students. Symbaloo presents these
resources as easily recognizable tiles
neatly laid out in “webmixes.”
Symbaloo now has a version for
educators at SymbalooEDU.com. This
cloud-based platform allows educators
to save sites, videos, articles, feeds,
Using Symbaloo
I started by creating separate Symbaloo webmixes for elementary and
secondary students. These webmixes
contained school websites, databases,
ebook links, web 2.0 tools, author websites, educational games, and more.
I set the elementary webmix as the
homepage for all of our computers and
made widgets on the iPads. I shared the
link on our library Facebook page and
Twitter and sent bookmarks home with
the URL as well as information about
Symbaloo. I wanted the students and
teachers to be able to get to our Symbaloo from anywhere.
After I taught students and teachers
about Symbaloo and introduced the
and more and access them on any web
browser on a Mac or PC. A browser
plugin, available for Chrome and
Firefox, allows for easy bookmarking
while surfing new websites.
“Mrs. Miller, I wish I could have
the Van Meter Elementary Technology Symbaloo webmix on my
iPhone too.”
T hese are the types of questions and requests I get from teach- ers, students, and even my own
children. Everyone would like a solution for keeping their online resources
organized, ready to access when they
need them, and in a format that
enables easy sharing.
And I am no exception. Last summer I started to think about and
reconsider how I shared resources
with my students. Lots of methods
and tools are available to organize and
