Symbaloo

Symbaloo is a great website to use as a resource for a classroom. Symbaloo is essentially a page where you can put all of your bookmarks in one place. Not only can you just add your bookmarks to the page, you can choose what each tile devoted to your links looks like. You can add a specific color, text, and even an icon that will be displayed on the tile. It allows you to personalize your page as much as possible.

Once you have made your account, you can create a new "webmix." You can create as many webmixes as you want and each can be geared toward a specific theme. Once you have created your webmix, you can edit it, and change the background, the name, and you can add more space as well. Creating a tile is as easy as clicking an empty space and search the name of your webpage. If you can't find it, simply copy and paste the link after clicking "create your own tile." From there you are able to create the title of the webpage, and decide if you want it to show. Then you can pick a color background and an icon for the title. Then you add it to the webmix and decide where you want it to go.

This site can be used by anyone who wants to organize their bookmarks. It can be used for anything that simple, or in an educational setting it can be used for teachers to give to parents and students. If given to parents and students, it can be a great resource for extra practice.

For my webmix, I am focusing on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) resources for a fourth grade

class that I could use to give my parents for their students to get extra practice at home. I have five sections in my symbaloo. Science, the blue tiles, technology, the orange tiles, engineering, the green tiles, and math, the pink tiles. These are sectioned off in the four corners of the symbaloo with educational resources in the middle.

In the science section I covered a few sections in both the third, fourth, and fifth grade standards. This offers grade level help, remediation and enrichment for all levels of students. In the third grade standards, I covered energy sources to show where in the environment you can find energy. In fourth grade, I covered moon phases with a matching activity and fossils with a build a dinosaur activity. For fifth grade I covered standards in the environment with a clean water activity, ecosystems with a walk through activity, and weather with a interactive weather creator.

In the technology section, I focused on internet safety. The majority of my links focus on learning about the technology that students are becoming more familiar with. There is one called "Learning about Technology" that students can use to explore what parts of the computer or other parts of technology do. I have two videos about internet safety, one focusing on being safe on the internet, and one talking about cyber bullying. I have another link to Kid Blog which is a safe blogging site for elementary children that I would like to use in my classroom. At a fourth grade level this would be perfect for them to use. I have another link called Welcome to the Web that teaches how to use the internet. I also have a link the the YouTube video about YouTube for Schools to introduce students and parents to the educational YouTube.

The engineering section is mainly focusing on activities that could be done at home. I have three activities that can be done at home with very limited amount of materials to help student on building. I have a video from Sesame Street that talks about what an Engineer does. The last one is a site completely devoted to engineering for kids. It contains videos, a roller coaster designer as well as activities, games and downloads. The engineering section is mainly to tie together science, technology and math.

The last section is the math section. I included many math practices such as fraction activities, place value practice, decimal review, long division review, games and review videos. For remediation, I included the place value practice, and the long division practice. These cover common core standards in operations and algebraic thinking for third grade. For on grade level practice, I included the fraction games and decimal practice covering common core standards for number and operations - fractions four the fourth grade. I also put up links to review videos that parents can use to learn the concepts so that they could better help their students learn.

The sections in the middle link to resources that students can use for research or for other practice that isn't included in my specific links. I used educational websites such as FunBrain, PBS Kids, and Discovery Education. I also included links to Edmodo, Glogster, Voki and Animoto. This section is to add to resources that parents and students can use for any general help they need.