Thing 5

I have to admit that I looked ahead at our assignments and started my Thing 5 in the beginning of the summer. I had been very jealous of everyone who has had a Symbaloo page and I wanted to add a page. So, I started exploring Symbaloo. If anyone isn't familiar with Symbaloo it is really a bookmarking page, but it creates visual icons to go with your quick links that makes it easier to remember the resource. It is super easy to create and is a perfect tool for me. I have set it as my homepage and can access all my favorite sites with a quick click of the mouse.

Although it is very convienent to not have to type in addresses anymore, that is not the only benefit. The greatest benefit to me is that I have put all those tools on it that I know and want to use. This way when I am looking for ideas for tools for projects, I can quickly look at the tiles and find tools that I otherwise would have forgotten about. It has already come in handy this summer when mapping with teachers. I can't imagine how helpful it is going to be during the school year.

My one concern was that I wasn't sure there was going to be enough room for all of the tiles I was going to create. At this point I have been able to keep creating new rows, I am not sure how long I can do that for. I think eventually I am going to need to start creating new pages and maybe even organizing my pages so that presentation tools are one page, collaborative tools on another and so forth.

Since I wanted to to take Symbaloo a step further for my final project submission I started a Symbaloo page for the kids this week. This is going to be set as my homepage for the computers in the library. This way when the students login all of the everyday links will be setup for them. This will save everyone time as I can't always get to everyone as quickly as I would like. In addition when I am doing tech projects with Kindergarten all by myself, they will just be able to click the icon to get to the tool. I am so excited about this time and stress saver. I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. I haven't quite filled my school one yet, so instead of having empty tiles I made all of them blue tiles with a link to the Lake George webpage. This makes it look nicer and if someone happens to click on it they can access useful resources from our school website.

Here is the Symbaloo I created for me earlier in the summer:
http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/homewebmix3442

Here is the Symbaloo I created for my students to finish off my final project:
http://www.symbaloo.com/shared/AAAABcy0wnoAA41_zwxhmA==

I look forwarded to viewing all the final projects. I have enjoyed learning from everyone all summer. Good luck with the start of your new school year!