Tag: symbaloo

maze
Pedagogy, Research

Creating Personal Learning Paths with Symbaloo

Mendi Benigni

In the early 2000s a popular lesson type was a webquest.  The goal of this was to create an inquiry-oriented lesson where all of the information comes from web-based resources.  This isn’t a newsletter on how to create a webquest.  There is tons of information on the web on how to do this, including an entire site dedicated to it at webquest.org.  This newsletter is about how to use Symbaloo to create these in a fast and easy way that includes student tracking.

Symbaloo is an amazing graphical bookmarking and web organization tool. I use it everyday and I love it.  Recently, they’ve expanded their offerings to add “Learning Paths.”  These paths take the user through the web resources in a sequence.  You can add almost any web resource as well as little quizzes and questions that can divert the uses onto a new path.  These are called branches.  This allows you to give students different content based on their knowledge but it also allows the user to choose the path in which they are most interested.

There is also a marketplace of Symbaloo Learning Paths created by other teachers that you can use for free!

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS

Start by going to http://learningpaths.symbaloo.com/

  • As a student, you type in a Session Code to begin
  • As an instructor, you log in after creating a free account

1 – Click Create a learning path
2 – Create a web tile (this can be audio, video, text, Google Drive files, etc.)
—- Title it with the Lesson title
—- Choose a web resource (this will include Google Drive files and sites)
—- Type in instructions or outcomes for that article or video
—- Click Save
3 – Create a new tile
—- Click one of the plus signs to add more resources or to put in a branch
4 – Create a quiz or question title
—- Click Create My Own Resource
—- Type in a title, ex. Quiz
—- Add all of the items indicated on the form

When you’re finished you can click the Play icon to preview it yourself
Then share it with your students

Screenshot of the Sharing Screen that is also pointing to the Reports icon in the upper right corner

Monitor your students’ progress in real-time.

SEE IT IN ACTION

Want to Learn More? Check out the Learning Paths Tutorials

screenshot of my symbaloo page
Productivity

Organize Your Digital Life

Mendi Benigni

There are a plethora of fantastic resources and applications online that many of us use everyday.  As for me, I use Google Drive, Asana, Remember the Milk, OAKS, My Charleston, the TLT blog and the TLT Tutorials blog, Pinterest, and Twitter, just to name a few.  I also like to keep a running list of applications that I’d like to research when I have time.  I’ve tried everything to try to make it easy for me to access these sites quickly but nothing works well.  I like Diigo but the interface is clunky.  I’ve used browser bookmarks but I don’t like those either.  Most of time I can’t find what I want because all the links look just the same.  Recently I’ve found SYMBALOO and I think I’ve found something that will finally allow me to create the one-stop-shop I’ve been looking for.

My Symbaloo page

Symbaloo allows you to create icons for each of your links then group them on a page.  You’ll notice above I have all of the sites I use constantly on the left (including links to specific Google Docs) and TLT’s social media on the right.  I can create a link to anything on the web.

With Symbaloo you can create groups, called Markers, and add a colored background to create a visual barrier for the group (above you can see the markers on the left, one is orange and one is black).  You can also add multiple tabs.  In the image you’ll see I have a tab for WORK links and one for RESEARCH links.  You can have as many tabs as you need.  Lastly, you can even create folders of links.  This is great for those links you don’t access as often but want to still have available to you.  Reorganizing the links is as easy as dragging and dropping them into a new space.

BEST PART…

Once you’ve created your Symbaloo page(s) you can easily make this your browser’s homepage.  So as soon as you open a web browser your Symbaloo page automatically comes up, giving you quick and easy access to the links and web-based files you use everyday!