Official Launch of SymbalooEDU

September 21st, 2010 • EDU, updates
Tags: e-portfolio, education, flickr, google docs, personal learning environment, ple, students, symbalooEDU, teachers, TeacherTube

Symbaloo is proud to announce the official launch of SymbalooEDU, a dedicated version for teachers and students. SymbalooEDU was created with the input of educators. SymbalooEDU comes with the ability to embed various web 2.0 tools from across the internet. Tools like Google Docs, Flickr, Slideshare, TeacherTube and more are now fully functional from within SymbalooEDU, making it a safe environment for students to gather resources and store the media onto an eportfolio.

Wendy Drexler, educational researcher and former K12 teacher who recently worked with over one hundred 7th grade science students shared that “SymbalooEDU is truly a tool that can empower students and if applied with teacher support, can facilitate digital literacy skills and support life long learning.” Randy Hollinger, middle school science instructor says, “Our students use SymbalooEDU to organize their networked tools and websites, save their work online as an eportfolio and then share their portfolios with one another for peer review…a great tool to teach your kids how to be a networked learner.”

SymbalooEDU comes with new possibilities of school branding, default content customization and webinars, for teachers who would like to know more about integrating other web 2.0 tools with SymbalooEDU. We encourage all teachers to participate in helping contribute and improve SymbalooEDU’s content and usability.

Please visit SymbalooEDU to get started today!

A New Resource for Teachers

August 12th, 2010 • EDU
Tags: class, EDU, learning tool, ple, school, schools, Teacher resources, teacher tools

Educational resources for teachers

These days there are many online tools and resources for teachers in the market, with the attempt to make classes more interactive and appealing. After Symbaloo’s launch, we have received a large number of emails in which people have stated that Symbaloo is a great resource for teachers. Some teachers even say that Symbaloo is amongst the most promising educational resources on the web, especially because it works very good as a Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

Symbaloo features

The visual interface and ease of aggregating content and sharing it, makes Symbaloo a great resource for teachers. With Symbaloo you can:

• Gather the best content on the web about 1 topic, and present it on a webmix
• Share a webmix with other teachers, and students
• Discover useful webmixes in the Symbaloo Gallery to use in the classroom
• Share a webmix with parents to provide some insight of the used materials

A worthy mention: Symbaloo is free of charge and doesn’t include any annoying ads.

Symbaloo as an educational teacher resource in Holland

In Holland, where Symbaloo has been founded, the most popular webmix is Digibord. This webmix is created by a teacher and is used in many classes on the digital board in the classroom (smartboard). It has been installed over 45,000 times in the last school year. This photo is of a Dutch classroom that is using a smartboard with Symbaloo (we found it on a Dutch newssite for teachers).

At Symbaloo, we think our tool can be used perfectly as one of the main resources for teachers . Once everything is set, Symbaloo can be used as the central point for gathering content for the class and for the students.

Start the discussion about Symbaloo as an educational resource in your classroom

For the school year that starts this September, we would like to do something extra for schools. Currently we’re working on a special EDU version of Symbaloo with the best online content, so all teachers can start right new school year with a great resource. We are interested in knowing which topics you would like to have a webmix for, or if you already have one please share it with us!

We are looking forward to your ideas and input, so we can all benefit from finding the best educational content on the web. You can share your ideas with us and other teachers at our “Education” forum.

You also might be interested to see:

• A French overview of all school webmixes
• Dutch Digibord
• A webmix with all EDU resources made by a teacher
• Follow Symbaloo EDU on Twitter
• Our recently launched PLE tool
  

Symbaloo mixes – Your new PLE platform

February 11th, 2010 • 8 comments EDU
Tags: education, personal learning environment, ple, school, teacher, teachers

Check out our new tool SYMBALOO EDU

Looking for a simple way for your students to share what they have found on the internet? Teachers at P.K.Yonge have introduced the students in their science classes to Symbaloo as a way to do PLE’s. A PLE is a student’s personal learning environment. A PLE diagram called “The Networked Student Processes and Tools: Taking Control and Responsibility for Learning” drawn by Wendy Drexler, better explains the benefits of a personal learning environment and how that allows the student to take responsibility of how they learn.

Wendy introduced Symbaloo as the platform for a PLE to Randy Hollinger. Randy,  a 7th grade science teacher at P.K.Yonge, then introduced it to his class. Below is a video his student created to explain how she uses Symbaloo and other web applications.

Teachers in the US aren’t the only ones using Symbaloo to get organized and reach students. Teachers in France and Holland are using it as well. Digibord, a webmix created by a teacher in Holland, is currently being used by 40,000 teachers. If you are a teacher in Holland or France and would like to connect and share ideas, please click on the Symbaloo links below.

DigiBord

Lyne Fichet Mes Bureaux

According to Rasmussen College, Symbaloo is a top application for tech savvy teachers.
http://www.rasmussen.edu/articles/100-apps-for-teachers.asp

Here at Symbaloo, we believe that our application is a great source for teachers and students regardless of the country. To help with a student’s education through technology gives us a great sense of achievement. Thank you to all of the teachers who are utilizing Symbaloo for educational purposes.