Symbaloo

I am a visual person and like to see everything spread out in front of me, including my bookmarks. Symbaloo allows my web homepage to show me all of the different places that are important to me, right in front of me. Then, with extra webmixes, I’m easily able to save web sites I come across and share them with colleagues and students. I haven’t used it much with students, but would imagine that they would find it easy to use and helpful in organizing their school and personal lives. It’s easily customizable and would recommend it to anyone who has so many bookmarks that they end up just getting lost in folders.

I work two part time jobs where I need to have access to many websites and resources. Symbaloo is great for this. Wherever I am I can log in and easily get to all of my bookmarks.

Strength–I am a visually oriented person and the color coded buttons work very well for me. I find that it is very easy to find the site I am looking for. It is also very easy to use

I would recommend this to anyone who likes to have easy access to many different websites. I demonstrated this tool at a teacher workday and it was very well received.

A great way for teachers to curate the web for students.

I use Symbaloo to bookmark my favorite websites. The system arranges all my markers into a tile board that you can share with others if you wish. Symbaloo calls these tile boards webmixes. Another popular feature for me and others who use it is that it offers a free iPhone app and a free Android app for your webmixes that you can access anywhere. The only negative is that the educational version is not free except for individual use. But you could have your students create their own Symbaloo accounts and create webmixes around their own favorite topics or class project researching.

I'm just getting started, but I love it as a personal bookmarking tool. I love that I can build up my webmix and then share it with my students so they can add it to their own collection. That way, I'm basically frontloading a mix of tools and resources that I think will help my students throughout the year. Then, they can add new resources to their own webmixes as we go.

It's fantastic not having to remember websites because all of my bookmarks are saved on my "other" computer.

I will be using this tool this year with my students and will come back to add to this review!

Symbaloo is my personal learning environment where I store frequently used web links. I have created tabs for different topics of interest e.g., web tools, conferences, blogs, student websites etc.

Strengths – you can create a link to any web URL. You can arrange the icons in whatever order you wish, you can create multiple tabs for different types of information. It has a large range of icons to choose from. You can share each Symbaloo separately. You can access Symbaloo from any computer on the Internet.

Weaknesses – You need to be connected to the Internet. You can't add comments about the URL. Others cannot add tiles to your Symbaloo they can only view it and add it to their own Symbaloo collection.

Classroom use – I create an example Symbaloo to demonstrate to students how they can create their own personal learning environment.

Recommend to a colleague – Yes, I have. When colleagues or students say they have found so many new tools and interesting websites but they have trouble remembering where they were. I advise them to start a Symbaloo library so they can easily find them again and access them from anywhere.

Symbaloo is a great bookmarking site. It provides a visual display that is easy for students to use and understand.

With Symbaloo you can collect all your weblinks in one place – launch to your blog, youtube, edmodo, twitter, news feeds – anything really. You can share your "web mixes" with others. Great for students to organise their Web 2.0 experience, their research and their learning.

Symbaloo is a great way to collect access all your favorite sites, from anywhere, through a visually stunning starting page.