Symbaloo

After having my students bookmark another page for English last week, and hearing, "but I already have so many bookmarks," I decided to start a Symbaloo page for my classes.  Have you heard of Symbaloo?

I am still a Symbaloo newbie, but here's my take--

Symbaloo allows you to have a webpage that organizes all of your bookmarks.  You can share your page with others and they will be able to see all of your bookmarks, but they can't add to your bookmarks.

Here is what my Symbaloo currently looks like:
http://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/smithstjes




While it is true that my Symbaloo does look a little bare right now, it actually took me a bit of time because I was customizing it.  I added pictures to some of my links to make them more interesting.  Some of the links already came with their own icons that I liked (Actively Learn and ExitTix above), but others weren't great.  You have two options for adding pictures.  One is to upload your own image which I did for the St. John's link, the third link from the left on the top row.   Or you can use one of the Symbaloo icons, such as the first two icons on the top left.

Here are some of the top reasons I like it--

1. I can post both links that I want the kids to have long term access to and daily lesson plan links that I will remove more quickly.

2. It is easily organizable and visually appealing.

3. I can embed it on to my class website (as I did above).

4. It is a great way to find something (especially things you use often) without adding tons of things to your bookmark bar.

It reminds me a little bit of how I have started to use Pintrest.  The main difference for me is that I like to "pin" things that I am not ready to use yet.  It is nice to keep those resources in one place.   Then if I am looking for something to jazz up a lesson, I can check Pintrest for some inspiration.  Once I have found a link that I want to use over and over, then I will add it to Symbaloo.

Just a quick note about embedding.  I initially had some difficulty embedding my Symbaloo page above.  Here is the tip that eventually got it to work--switch to "HTML" at the top of the screen on blogger.  That way when you embed the HTML code, the website can read it.  So thankful to have figured this out to use it on other sites as well.

Have you used Symbaloo?  How do you like it?