During the first week of my Emerging Technologies course at Full Sail University, I found a great video on PLE’s. If you have not had a chance to see it, please take a look.
Drexler, W. (Producer). (n.d.) Welcome to my PLE! Retrieved October 3, 2010 from www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEls3tq5wIY
I could see very quickly that this needed to be part of my Action Research project to help shift my classroom from a teacher-centered classroom to a student-centered classroom, so I am researching Symballo EDU this week for my new Web 2.0 tool and will use it next week for my Practical Experience assignment, to try to help my students set up their own PLE’s in the classroom.
So what is Symbaloo, other than a strange name? Symbaloo is actually a Greek word that means, ‘assembling’, 'gathering'. It is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to organize their desktop into a series of tiles and tabs for commonly used bookmarks. These tabs are called, Webmixes and can be shared with other members of the Symbaloo community. You can search for Webmixes on almost any topic or create your own Webmix. Each Webmix is made up of tiles that you can move around to personalize. You can search from an extensive library of pre-made tiles or custom design your own tiles to fit your specific needs.
Why does Symbaloo appeal to students as opposed to something like iGoogle? Symbaloo is simple and colorful. iGoogle takes a little more patience, but ultimately provides a more in depth PLE. My thought is; combine the two. Make an iGoogle page part of the Symbaloo Webmix, so that a student learns to use the iGoogle page as a more precise way to organize their individual projects.
The basic service is free, but Symbaloo provides upgrades and custom services to companies and larger organizations, that undoubtedly makes it a profitable business venture. They recently launched Symbaloo EDU to target the education community. Symbaloo is currently offering the following special for teachers:
(Available until November 1st)
Special for teachers: 50 additional keys for your Free Plus Solution AND a Free webinar about Google Docs & Embedding on Symbaloo.
Why does Symbaloo appeal to students as opposed to something like iGoogle?
ReplyDeleteAnne,
This personal learning environment looks like a perfect porthole for students to start to learn how to organize the best of the Web. The WebMix tiles certainly make for a clean but simple interface that would appeal to my middle school students. Once a student is engaged they do take responsibility for their own learning. The flashiness might catch their eye but their curiosity will lead them to understanding. When they understand how to use the tool then the question should be asked "is the tool useful"? Once you have student buy-in you will see the class adopting this personal learning environment and actively use it on a daily basis. iGoogle may not be as appealing to your students but I like your thoughts on combining the two by including a night cool page into the students WebMix. This would give the students who wanted a more feature rich PLE to explore. I know with my students this would be a big hit and I'm thinking right now how I can integrate this into my current curriculum. Thanks!
Anne,
ReplyDeleteGreat find! I love the simplicity and user-friendliness of this PLE interface. I can see how it would appeal to students, especially those who are visual learners. I couldn’t wait when I saw it to go and create my own. The video was great as well. I would love to be a teacher at whatever school that student attends. It looks like they integrate a lot of different web 2.0 tools we have been looking at and discussing during this course. I could definitely see integrating this into a classroom setting for any grade level, but especially for the younger grade levels to introduce them to a PLE. It is a great way to help them start becoming responsible for their own learning and teaches organization skills as well. Thanks again for introducing me to it.
Anne, I loved your review of Symbaloo. Honestly, as a very visual and simplistically organized person, it appeals to me more than iGoogle. In fact, I could see myself actually using this system as opposed to ignoring it like I seem to be doing with all that painstaking setup of iGoogle. I do realize, like you said, that’s it is more scholarly and indepth, but I just love how these little tiles look and function as opposed to the separate full web pages of iGoogle. I also love how there are different tabs for various purposes of links, such as shopping, school, social networking, etc. I already do that with the organization of my bookmarks in my browser: I would be totally lost without it.
ReplyDeleteI too was totally blown away by that PLE video using Symbaloo…I can’t wait to see how you transfer it to your classroom! It makes me wonder if I could fit it into my ARP somehow… ☺ Students are highly visual and like their information fast, available, and in bite sized pieces. They also love to personalize. I think Symbaloo is an awesome resource for all ages, thanks so much for sharing!
Anne, what an exciting tool! I started setting up my own webmix, and was drawn in immediately. I love the fact that I can add tools and bookmarks that I will use, and get rid of those that I won't. It is so bright and colorful, it makes me think of a puzzle game, in other words, it is very well designed aesthetically. You can also create your own tiles, with your own links, when sites or tools you use aren't present. I can see students definitely using this to create their own PLE and become so engrossed that they don't even realize they are learning. With all that freedom, comes a lot of responsibility and self-motivation, but I think it will be an exciting tool for you to explore with your class. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteAnne thanks for the follow-up on the great video you posted. I was wondering what the seventh grader used and made a note to explore it -- so I'm so glad you did it for us!
ReplyDeleteI signed up and began playing with it as soon as I saw Rem's comment to your post. It's very cool.
Last week, based on the video you posted, I dumped my Firefox bookmarks into my own graphic organizer: http://www.depaulcatholichs.org/myBookmarks.htm. Now I can't wait to re-do them in Symbaloo! Great job!
This is an amazing application where we can organized all the Web 2.0 that we are using. Introducing students to PLE is very important.I think that Symbaloo is more simple and more organized than iGoogle. I will be using this tool for myself and in the future I will be using this tool for my students. Thanks great tool!
ReplyDelete