Goodbye Delicious - Hello Symbaloo!

With the change over of delicious and all the problems that have gone alongside it, it has seen me seek out new ways to share and display learning links for my students.  With the change over the kids were quick to point out that tags were missing and it was hard to find links that they knew where to find previously.

So this sent me on hours (yes, hours) long search to find something that would allow me to create several pages but also allow the students to have visuals of the links they are wanting to use.  I really wanted to switch to a more visual form of bookmarking rather than word tags after myself enjoying Pinterest - a visual bookmarking tool due to the ease of use and visual way of organising links.

I had a play around with the delicious stacks - which at first seemed very promising.  Apart from when I kept getting 500 gateway errors from them.  When stacks did work it would only allow me to stack together my first page of links but not access the other pages.  Fiddly and unfun. So, I gave up.  I moved on to trialling websites like favoritus, portaportal, sitemarks and more - all visual bookmarking sites that looked extremely good.  All of them had the same problem for me.  The lack in ability to be able to create a standalone web page that had seperate pages for my links. Painful.

Then I remembered a site that I had previously played with and put into my 'could be helpful' pile of links. Symbaloo.  It's a simple idea - you create webmixes or pages of links.  Each link is a little coloured icon that you can arrange across your webmix.  The webmix can be shared via email, kept private, shared with the world or embedded into webpages.  So this is the angle I have taken.  I am creating seperate pages for each subject and colour coding links with visuals also.  The students used it in the last 2 days of term and the votes were pretty clear - all but 4 students loved the new Symbaloo system because of the colours, images and how easy it was to find links.  The 4 students who didn't like it said that it was because they were used to delicious.  Though 1 student did say he might like Symbaloo more once 'he got used to it' - awesome!

The image from above is from my Daily 5 wiki for the students.  This is one area I have created Symbaloo link pages and it has now become the portal that they will use for links.  They can either go straight to the page or jump to it via the class blog.  You can view the website here.

The colour coding system is quite handy also.  I have a student who is new to my class from overseas and has minimal english.  The links in orange are specifically set up for her - the students were great at showing her that they were for her and the second time on the computer she seemed to understand that this was a great area for her to start.

The other thing about Symbaloo that was a bonus is that the interface works on iPads and iPod touches.  One of my students became a fantastic tester and tried it out.  Unfortunately only 2 of the above links would run on an iPod - this has meant that I've created other Symbaloo's that will contain mobile device friendly links!

The biggest drawback is the time that this takes compared to setting up links in delicious - with the delicious bookmarking paglets it is extremely easy to link and tag websites.  While Symbaloo isn't as easy to tag websites at the moment the visual elements and arrangements for the students makes it far outweigh the time it takes me to add links in!

Delicious In The Class Update

As per a previous post here I discussed the use of the social bookmarking site Delicious. Once again in 2011 I am continuing to utilise Delicious as a way of storing class bookmarks for students to use at school and at home. Over the first few weeks the students seem to be able to easily navigate the site and find where their favourite sites are. Just a few tips to get you going if you are planning to use delicious for your class!

Tips:
* Think carefully about the tags for your websites... it's easy to get caught up in bookmarking amazing sites and end up with plenty of different tags.

* When deciding on tags think about if you want tags organised by your reading/maths groups (e.g. the 'Dazzling Dividers' group) or by levels (e.g. 'Stage 5 strategies') etc.

* Try to keep tags together by using a headline tag e.g. Writing_online or Writing_organisers This allows the students to look for the subject and then what they need. As delicious organises tags down the side by Top 10 and also All Tags - it allows them to search alphabetically for the subject they need.


* You can add information to each link that you post e.g. what you can do there or tasks that you have set for them to complete on the page. I find that not every link needs to have this added - the students are quick to know what their favourite links are named.

* Add your delicious page to your class wiki or blog.

* Send home a notice promoting your delicious account as parents are keen to have links to some great websites that children can use at home.

* Set up a whiteboard in class or a place on your class blog for students to add their favourite sites too. Students are more than able to login and add their own sites - but teach the concept of tagging carefully so you don't end up with random tags to re-organise!

* Link up with other classes via delicious, so you can make the most of the social aspect of delicious. This is my next step for 2011 with Delicious - so if you have a class delicious account add it to the comment section so we can link up!

Delicious in the Class

One of the ways that I organise computer time for students is by utilising the website Delicious. It's a simple concept - take the idea of bookmarks that you keep on your desktop and broaden it out so that your bookmarks are available anywhere you have internet access. Your bookmarks are accessible via a url - like this -> http://delicious.com/hey.milly.

I've been using delicious as a way of organising my own links and sharing links through conferences for a few years. Last year I started using this in the class also and the kids quickly got a hang of it. This year with my Year 4 class I am also using the same idea - they have also quickly figured out how to access and use their delicious page.

The first thing I do is set up a class delicious account e.g. http://delicious.com/twelve2010 that the students access to get their bookmarks. I start with one curriculum area and teach the basics of how to access it and find the links you want.

The great thing about Delicious is that when you add a link into your account you can tag the link with a keyword. For example if I took the link Questionaut I could tag it as several different areas like thinking, problem solving, maths and more depending on where you wanted to keep it.

As you create your own tags this allows you to easily tag links for specific groups, curriculum areas or teaching points that you are working on with the students.

When students come to work on the computer - their taskboard will pinpoint the tag that they will look for when they get to Delicious e.g. Addition This also gives the students some ownership in choosing tasks that they feel confident with and need to work on. There are also a range of websites that the students can use to develop that teaching point or need.

Currently I am the only one adding links to the delicious, but would like to move forward to the kids finding great sites and being able to share them or add them to the class Delicious page.