Symbaloo is a great way to share a series of links with your students or colleagues. Symbaloo has a great interface that you can use to organize your internet life using webmixes. You can also search other webmixes for things you’d like to use.
Simply find a bookmark that you want to save and click on a tile to add it to your webmix. There is even a web browser button called a bookmarker to allow fast adding of another tile to your Symbaloo mix.
Symbaloo can create what was once called a Webquest by organizing the sites that you want your students to access from one site. It keeps things very simple for even our youngest students. Here is a webmix used by fifth graders who are researching information about songwriting, producers and music production: http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/songwriting101
Children under the age of 13 are prohibited by the Terms of Service (TOS) from creating their own Symbaloo, just as is the case on most websites that require personal information in order to sign up. This doesn’t prohibit them from using a webmix that someone else has created, however!
The Symbaloo educational version provides a great space to share links with your students. There are mobile apps available for both the iOS as well as the Android platforms.
Barbara Balch Vinal, Technology Chair for NCMEA, Charlotte, NC © National Association for Music Education
