This month we will be featuring STAR Discovery Educators on our Spotlight! We can’t wait to show you how these awesome educators are using SymbalooEDU!

Mellisa Young

Mellisa is an Instructional Technology Specialist from Dorchester District Two in South Carolina.

Q: How did you hear about Symbaloo?

Melissa: I first heard about Symbaloo from a colleague.

Q: With whom and how are you using Symbaloo?

Melissa: I created a staff webmix for my staff last August. Most teachers have Symbaloo set as their homepage. I also placed our staff webmix on the school website. I am currently working on a webmix for students to use over the summer to strengthen their reading and math skills.

*click on picture to see her webmix

Q: As an administrator how has Symbaloo helped you?

Symbaloo has been my favorite discovery this year! I use it several times each day, and it is a huge time saver. My teachers and I love it!

Q4) What is your favorite feature in Symbaloo?

I think it’s great that you can create webmixes that are customized to fit your needs.

Michelle Phillips

Michelle Phillips is a 6th grade Science Teacher, SMART Exemplary Educator, SMART Certified Trainer and DEN Star from Allen ISD from Texas.

*click on picture to see her profile.

Here’s Michelle’s list of virtual field trips in this webmix.

Q: How did you hear about Symbaloo?

A: Michelle: I learned about Symbaloo during an online webinar

Q: With whom and how are you using Symbaloo?

A: Michelle: I use Symbaloo both personally and professionally. I share webmixes during technology staff developments and presentations. I also embed my science webmixes for my students on my school website. I create new webmixes depending our our unit of study. Right now I have a webmix on my website for a ecosystems research project.  http://www.allenisd.org/Page/23602

Q: What is your favorite feature in Symbaloo?

Michelle: I can color code the tiles.

We have more STAR Discovery Educator Spotlight features coming up throughout next week! Stay tuned!

Today we want to show you how you can create a tile that links to another webmix. You can add tiles for your own or other users webmixes as long as they are shared publicly. Another great feature that allows you to organize and distribute your online resources. Please check out our YouTube channel and the Tuesday Tutorial webmix to find more tutorials and information on how to make the most out of your Symbaloo experience.

Watch, learn and enjoy:

Tune in every Tuesday as we share a tutorial each week to improve your Symbaloo skills. Do you have any requests for our next tutorial? Drop us a line at feedback@symbaloo.com, leave a comment here or connect with us through our social media. We’d love to hear from you!

Archive #symchat 5/15/13: How has tech evolved fundraising, volunteering and other school activities?

Check out our #symchat with co-host Edbacker and our educators about how tech and social media help improve fundraising, volunteering and other school activities and events.

Storified by SymbalooEDU· Thu, May 16 2013 10:25:35

@bankvogue No we haven’t. Very cool idea! Thank you for sharing it with us and our educators #symchatSymbalooEDU

@MyWeb4Ed @SymbalooEDU Well, let’s expand that in the coming weeks. #symchatBriceson Hill

Dishes and #symchat, super productive right now and it feels great. Briceson Hill

@SymbalooEDU @MyWeb4Ed @edbacker I agree, this is why I am here! (Mostly) #symchatBriceson Hill

@MyWeb4Ed @DJ_hitPlay @edbacker Amazing! We will definitely put you two in touch and would love to help #symchatSymbalooEDU

@MyWeb4Ed I shall soon be starting a series on exactly how to do that #symchat Briceson Hill

@DJ_hitPlay #symchat I’m fundraising for a 9-year old boy’s heart transplant – I want to learn how! cotaforzakm.comCarol Mortensen

RT @MyWeb4Ed: @SymbalooEDU @sabuller @shannonmmiller Having a slow day today, it’s my birthday! SM? Happy Birthday Carol! #symchatSymbalooEDU

RT @DJ_hitPlay: @SymbalooEDU @edbacker @RyanVukoye @edbacker Very nice to have the opportunity to be here! #symchatSymbalooEDU

@edbacker @RyanVukoye @DJ_hitplay Welcome to #symchat! Nice to have you join us SymbalooEDU

This tuesday we show you how you can use the search bar in the right hand corner to find your own webmixes and navigate directly to them by using the Tab Filtering system. You can also hide webmixes temporarily by clicking the little X on the right side of the webmix tab. A great way to organize your account and have easy access to the webmixes you are currently working on. Please check out our YouTube channel and the Tuesday Tutorial webmix to find more tutorials and information on how to make the most out of your Symbaloo experience.

Watch, learn and enjoy:

Tune in every Tuesday as we share a tutorial each week to improve your Symbaloo skills. Do you have any requests for our next tutorial? Drop us a line at feedback@symbaloo.com, leave a comment here or connect with us through our social media. We’d love to hear from you!

Archive #symchat 5/8/13: Online Tutoring VS In-Person Tutoring

Educators and students are invited to join #Symchat every Wednesday at 3 PM PST on Twitter. #Symchat is a place to share ideas, resources or any interesting topic about today’s education."

Storified by SymbalooEDU· Thu, May 09 2013 13:56:20

@SymbalooEDU @Sophia VERY cool…Thank you so much for sharing. #symchatShannon Miller

@SymbalooEDU @Sophia VERY cool…Thank you so much for sharing. #symchatShannon Miller

@shannonmmiller We’ve tried out @Sophia & we enjoy the sleek, user friendly interface & you can embed Symbaloo in the lessons! #symchatSymbalooEDU

@SymbalooEDU @sabuller @MyWeb4Ed Great question I would say it depends on child again. My little one could succeed in that. #symchatShannon Miller

Today we want to introduce you to the widgets that you can use within your Symbaloo. In this tutorial you will learn how to search for widgets in the database and how you can utilize them via the center box. This videos is focusing on the Facebook and Twitter widgets, but there are a lot more to discover. Take a look at this webmix edu.symbaloo.com/mix/widgets that contains a selection of available widgets. Please check out our YouTube channel to find more tutorials.

Watch, learn and enjoy:

Tune in every Tuesday as we share a tutorial each week to improve your Symbaloo skills. Do you have any requests for our next tutorial? Drop us a line at feedback@symbaloo.com, leave a comment here or connect with us through our social media. We’d love to hear from you!

Tuesday Tutorial: How to embed on Symbaloo and how to embed a webmix on other sites

This Tuesday is all about the embed options you have with Symbaloo. In the first tutorial you learn how to embed other applications onto Symbaloo. You can integrate YouTube videos or Google docs and watch and work with them without leaving Symbaloo. Take a look at this webmix edu.symbaloo.com/mix/dolphin that contains examples of all applications Symbaloo is able to embed. The second video shows you how you can embed webmixes on other sites like a website, a blog or a wikispace making use of the embed code that Symbaloo provides once the webmix is shared. Please check out our YouTube channel to find more tutorials.

How to embed on Symbaloo:

How to embed a webmix on other sites:

Tune in every Tuesday as we share a tutorial each week to improve your Symbaloo skills. Do you have any requests for our next tutorial? Drop us a line at feedback@symbaloo.com, leave a comment here or connect with us through our social media. We’d love to hear from you!

This week, we’re excited to introduce you to Sylvia Buller as our Educator Spotlight. Sylvia is a 4th grade teacher from Resurrection Catholic School in Pennsylvania. Her webmixes are very popular among our educators. She’s been doing an awesome job at bringing technology to her classroom. Sylvia is also very active in the SymbalooEDU Community by joining our weekly #symchat with different educational topic discussions, participating in our contest and sharing her webmixes through Twitter. Thank you for your continuous support Sylvia!

Check out her profile:  http://edu.symbaloo.com/profile/buller

Take a look at our interview with Sylvia as she shares her discovery of Symbaloo and how she is using Symbaloo with her students.

Q1) How did you hear about Symbaloo?

Sylvia: I heard about Symbaloo through Twitter. I noticed educators tweeting out information and resources using webmixes. Symbaloo was also mentioned in some smackdown webinars I found through Twitter. I loved what I was seeing, took a closer look at Symbaloo and have been using it ever since.

Q2) With whom and how are you using Symbaloo?

Sylvia: I create Symbaloo webmixes first and foremost for my students, but I also enjoy sharing them with my coworkers and my Twitter and Edmodo connections.  

The webmixes used in my classroom provide various types of opportunities for learning. They can provide review/enrichment for specific content taught. Such as this Animal United Webmix.

Some are used for student research for reports/projects like our year-long Pennsylvania project.

I can select specific sites at different instructional levels for fun practice of basic skills. (Math, Language Arts webmixes) We also have our own “favorites” webmix for sites we use often and webmixes for many of the major holidays which are used often. When introducing a new unit or approaching a major holiday, I often hear this question from my students: “Is there a Symbaloo for this?” My students love Symbaloo! I enjoy sharing my webmixes with my coworkers and my PLN. I am glad they are useful and can be made available so easily for so many teachers and students.

I worry less about students surfing the web for research and instructional games, etc. since I can direct them to just one webmix filled with information that I have hand selected for them.

Q3) As an administrator how has Symbaloo helped you?

Sylvia: Symbaloo has helped me to organize information on my classroom website better. I was able to take many links off the website and place them on webmixes. This saved space and also made the pages so much more visually attractive.

Symbaloo has enabled me to add more technology into my lessons since I can easily embed so many different items into a webmix.

Symbaloo has helped me connect to many other educators through the sharing of webmixes.

Q4) What is your favorite feature in Symbaloo?

Sylvia: First of all, I do love the new Symbaloo, especially the sidebar! I can’t name just one favorite feature. Symbaloo is great for so many reasons. It is really quite simple to use. The tiles can be customized. It organizes bookmarks very easily. It has a nice gallery. Tiles can be searched. There are color and background options. Webmixes can be embedded and/or linked to my classroom blog and website. The list could go on and on!

Q5) Are you Symbaloo Certified? If so, how has the program helped you?

Sylvia: I took the Basic certification course last summer and plan on taking the second part this summer. Taking the course helped me to learn Symbaloo so much quicker. The lessons and assignments were easy to follow and to complete. I didn’t have to teach it to myself which can be so time consuming sometimes. I hope to teach our faculty how to make their own webmixes and to convince them of the value of Symbaloo in their own classrooms.

 Check out Sylvia’s most popular webmix

Here are some adorable SymbalooEDU feedback from Sylvia’s 4th graders.

Check out her blog post here: http://mrsbuller.edublogs.org/2013/04/24/symbalooedu/#comments

Are you interested in becoming one of our Symbaloo Educator Spotlight? Email us at edu@symbaloo.com and tell us why we should feature you on our next Spotlight.