6 Ways to Innovate in your School with Symbaloo

To start the school year, Jillian Johnson has listed six ways to innovate in your school with Symbaloo. Symbaloo is a leading tool for gathering and sharing resources with your students, their parents, and other stakeholders. Read along as Jillian explains how you can use Symbaloo to its fullest potential in your school!

The online tools created by Symbaloo are designed to be helpful, easy, and time-saving for anyone looking to organize and share their favorite web resources. We have compiled a list of the top virtual learning tools to help you decide which tools to use in your classroom, of in remote or hybrid learning environments. Don't you have a Symbaloo account yet? Create one today!

1. Teacher Planning

Create a Symbaloo webmix for teachers to collaborate with one another and share classroom resources. Many of the tools or activities that current classroom teachers use commonly come from a web search or are inspired by a recent post from another teacher on social media. It can be challenging to keep track of the ideas we find and share. Specific subject-area or grade-level teachers can use Symbaloo to gather resources they are planning to use for a unit, link them together on a Symbaloo webmix, then share out the link or a QR code on any device for others to access and use. 

2. School Website Shortcuts

Do parents struggle navigating your school's website? A Symbaloo webmix for your school can help by linking all school-related items together. A webmix can be accessed from any device, and does not require the user to log in. Set your Webmix as your School Homepage for easy access. The customizable tiles could link to any websites or paperwork parents may need to fill out, links to pay for school lunch, quick reference guides, field trip information, school calendar dates, staff directory, etc. Tiles and widgets can also be modified to include school mascots and logos too! 

You can make the accessibility for students and parents even more effortless by creating a Symbaloo PRO School or District Webspace, which allows you to share any resource that parents can access by only remembering the URL!

3. School Headlines

Looking to stay ahead of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and the next thing? Schools can create a Symbaloo webmix to share and boost school-wide and community engagement stories without requiring users to have a social media account. Photographs, news articles, school awards or competitions, teacher recognition, and anything else that your school is proud to share with others can be linked on the webmix. Parents and other community members can stay up to date with any school headlines being shared through the Symbaloo webmix link. 

4. Theme Days

School theme days are a great way to boost morale, while also recognizing certain topics or events in a unique way. School theme days could be focused around topics like Hispanic Heritage, Veteran’s Day, Women's History Month, or Earth Day to name a few. School staff, teachers, PTA members, and even students can create webmixes that link to the school theme day event information. These links could include resources for theme day ideas, Google Forms for sign-ups, youtube channels, interactive sites, and anything else that can relate to the theme. Webmixes can also be used again and again each calendar year, which can help to coordinate annual school theme days.

5. “Home” Work

A Symbaloo webmix can be used as a collection of innovative student-centered homework options for students. Homework options such as embedded pre-selected audio books or podcasts with listening response forms, research-based learning games, interactive videos, printable PDF files, and virtual field trips or expert connections are just a few ideas of what could be linked inside a Symbaloo webmix. Symbaloo can also be used as a remote or hybrid learning tool in which students have their school dashboard at home!

6. Clubs & Teams

Create a Symbaloo webmix for any extracurricular activity, project, club, or school sport. A Symbaloo webmix is a great option for students and parents to have one location to access club information, parental forms, supplemental resources, videos, links to join virtual meetings, calendar dates, contact information, etc. Caregivers will also appreciate the ability to access the club or team information from any device, without needing to remember any login credentials or account information. Remember, Symbaloo tiles and widgets can be customized to match school mascots and colors too!