What's Developing: Oh, Snap! Symbaloo

This bit of organization heaven is my labor of love. Now, I warn you, there is a whole lotta information jammed into this one resource. For those of you who are not familiar with Symbaloo, it is a website that is basically a docking point for all of your bookmarks. In Symbaloo, each page or tab is called a webmix. These webmixes can remain private, or as in this case, they can be shared and searched. Currently, the Symbaloo webmix I'm sharing is just one webmix I've saved.  I have a personal webmix that I use as my default Homepage that has my favorite news, financial institutions, blogs... any link that I use frequently.

I learned about Symbaloo while attending an ESOL conference. They demonstrated ways to search and add webmixes, but I wanted to create my own. So if you don't find use for the one I've created, you can search for any and all kinds of webmixes that have already been created on any topic (Think Pinterest, but for website bookmarks).

Now, let me walk you through mine. I needed a better way to organize all of the websites I was learning about, all the sites shared with me, and ones I observed teachers using in the classroom. I also needed them well organized because bookmarking was not working for me. Organizationally and visually, bookmarks were a mess, especially with a work and personal computer.

This is the resulting webmix - a color-coded elementary education collection of websites. I've created this one to be mainly geared toward reading/ELA for ESOL students, but remember, most anything that involves scaffolding, media, student-created products, and games will benefit all students. Clicking on the image will take you directly to the Symbaloo link I've created. Each website has a small description on it, and I have color-coded as follows:

• Red - Reading / Online Read-Aloud
• Blue - Teacher and Lesson Planning Resources
• Purple - Upper Level Bloom's Taxonomy / Student-Generated Sites
• Yellow - Games
• Green - ELL, ELA, Grammar
• White - Social Networking, Media
• Gray - Assessments

You can use this as a jump off for you own Symbaloo, adding or deleting websites of your choosing. I know that Symbaloo has been a life-saver for managing websites for me. As a teacher also interested in blogging and photography, I'd lose my head without it. If you already use Symbaloo, I would be honored if you added this as a tab to your existing collection. I hope you find some interesting websites and that Symbaloo is a tool you feel you can use!