Symbaloo

Hello everyone!! I’m Míriam Porras and I am going to talk about SYMBALOO!

                           

Symbaloo is a personal startpage that allows you to navigate the web and compile your favorite sites all into one visual interface. You can save easily your bookmarks in the cloud and access them from anywhere with any device. It is a visual bookmarking tool that makes it simple and fun to organize the best of the web. Thus, you can create your personal startpage for the web and connect your social media and other widgets.

I think it is a good app for organize different content and collect different interesting links that you can use in your classroom. Then, you have in the same page all the links without searching again one by one. In addition, you don’t have to pay for using it! You only need to register on the webpage using your email, and you can create your own Symbaloo!!

Moreover, pupils could use the app too. For instance, if they are doing a project, they can save the interesting webpages to collect all the information in their startpage. In addition, they can show their own pages to their parents involving them in their learning process.

Apart from this, once their start page is created, they can share it with their peers, also they can save other Symbaloos and search for others you believe are useful for the task.

STRENGTHENS	WEAKNESSES
There is a tutorial in the same app and instructions that you can use if you don’t know how to use it.	It doesn’t have any variation with this app. You only can make your startpage.
You can add all the links you want.	You can’t create activities in relation to Symbaloo.
You can have all the links that you are interested in the same startpage.	You only can share links.
Symbaloo can be shared.	You need to have an account to create your startpage.

I am doing my Practicum in Servei de Llengües del Departament d’Ensenyament de Catalunya. I want to share the Symbaloo I have created for my Practicum:

https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/reculldepremsaeducacio

In this Symbaloo, you will find a collection of different digital newspaper that contains Education news.

I want to share this, because I want to demonstrate that you can also use as a professional and not only in your classroom with pupils.

I hope you enjoy it!!!

Míriam Porras

I'm Georgina Rabasa

Hello!

My name is Georgina Rabasa, and I’m 22 years old. But next 24th of may, I will be 23! This is me in one of my travels. I love discovering the world and fortunately I had the opportunity to go to lots of beautiful places, and I will be doing it all life..

I finished my degree in Infant  Education last June and I’m actually working in Llar d’Infants el Trenet, in Terrassa, my city. I have a class with 18 students and they’re so cute and lovely. Every day I wake up so motivated to do lots of things with my pupils and we all enjoy the time we spend together in the class.

I love kids and also I love English, that’s why I’m doing a Master of Learning and Teaching English in Infant and Primary Education. It’s being very useful, it’s helping me to open my mind and be more professional, with more resources and ideas to teach English in a good way.

I always loved new technologies, computers, phones, tablets, and I’m always reading about new products, especially Apple’s technologies. I love all that Apple does, and I’m so satisfied with all their products.

I have to say that I use a lot cloud computing by Google drive and dropbox, I find them so useful and very easy to use. Also, I’m in touch with some internet tools such as Pinterest and twitter. I use a lot Pinterest to find some arts and crafts ideas for the kids, and also for decoration, costumes, songs, activities, etc.

I have a twitter account that, first of all I use it to talk with friends but by the past of the time I started to follow educational newspapers, teachers, and more professional profiles. I do not tweet so much but I check and read almost 3 times per week, and I do it also on Facebook but I use it for a more personal stuff.

I’m not so used with social bookmarking because of my lack of information about it. Now I see lots of advantages about using it. For example, I have lots of links saved in my browser and now with Symbaloo I can have it all classified in a very visual way.

During my degree in Infant Education I was informed about Delicious and I found it interesting, but then I had no need to use it, and nowadays I see it like a way to research about my interests and educational news, ways of teaching, resources, opinions..

Finally, I have to create an account in Linkedin with all my professional information, and be able to meet professionals and share my experience.

I will use more social networks because they’re so positive and rich of information!

See you soon!

About me...

About me...

My name is Alba Sicilia and I am 27 years old. I have always had an interest and passion for Learning and Teaching processes and for English language and culture.

Since I was young I have also had an interest in learning and teaching a second language.  I began to take English classes at an early age in an academy with different teachers. At university, I focussed more on language teaching and the acquisition of a second language and took some courses in methodology and classroom management.

Teaching a foreign language in Primary school is, however, my preferred area of expertise because it includes the development and integration of different language skills and, especially because I enjoy working with children. I have already gained experience in this area, and I am presently employed in Jesuïtes Sarria – Sant Ignasi school English department since September 2010, where I teach English in Primary 1 and 2 and also Primary 6.  I also teach drama in English at the same levels. I am assistant coordinator for European exchanges and travel with groups of children during the school year to partner schools in the UK.

It might be appropriate to mention that I also gained teaching experience in the UK for 1 year. My first work experience was in Essex (London) as a guaranteed supply teacher covering all levels from Nursery to Primary positions. Sometime afterwards, I was recommended as a Reception class teacher in Northbury Primary school in Barking. The knowledge of the British Education has greatly influenced my teaching skills and I look at that period of my life as a turning point in my career and the confirmation of my vocation in the educational field.

        

I actually think technologies help us to find, organise, manage and access different information and all the courses and training I have been taking before, have been very helpful for me. That is why I decided to choose this optional subject.  

I have to say the lack of time truly affects me in this topic. I sincerely would like to spend more time on my laptop investigating new resources, different tools, social networks… for sure it will help me and it will make my day by day easier.

I really enjoy exploring and using technologies so hopefully in a short period of time I will be able to discover more and more.   

During these last days, I have been introducing myself in two different social networks: Twitter and Linkldin. I used to have a Twitter account but I never used it before. However, LinkedIn is certainly new for me. I signed up two weeks ago and I have been uploading my curriculum and I have started following different Educational groups, English teachers, educators around the world and colleagues. I find it very attractive, it gives you an open mind of what we have around regarding our professional life and it keeps you updated.

Moreover, I consider myself a beginner on Symbaloo and FlipBoard. I downloaded the Apps on my Ipad and I have been exploring but I don’t exactly know how they work. I seriously need more time to guide my learning.

So I would like to take benefit of all the tools, resources and social marks regarding my professional life and I would like to show my students how they could take advantage of it.

All Over the World with Passion, Love and Joy !

My name is María Sánchez Lerena.  I am an English Primary Education teacher. I like to learn about effective and innovative pedagogies, and I believe lifelong learning is one of the keys for professional fulfillment. Following this philosophy, this year I am obtaining the Blanquerna Master´s Degree “Teaching and Learning of the English Language for Kindergarten and Primary”. This Master´s is both challenging and demanding but at the same time enlightening and rich. Therefore, I feel very passionate about it, because it is giving me countless resources to be a better professional and maneuver myself around in the educational field.

On a more personal level I have a passion for travel, explore and cultural exchange. As a result, I have lived in Canada and Norway; and traveled around India, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Mexico, USA, Europe and all over Spain. My next stop will be Minnesota, where next year I will be working as an assistant teacher in a Spanish Immersion School. Furthermore, I am a nature lover, spending most of my free time either in the beach or the mountains. I profoundly enjoy and admire all the artistic disciplines. I adore cooking, reading, writing, painting, sculpting, doing arts and crafts, and I am addicted to sports.

After mentioning my passion for life and educational work, I must say that they both come together. As I see it, my knowledge and love for the English language has allowed me to discover and develop most of my passions in life. This awareness has motivated me to teach English as a way to open countless experiences provided by a fascinating and multicultural world.

One of the reasons why I chose this optional module is that I have always wanted to learn about ICT but unfortunately my Degree's ICT subject was rather poor.  Hence, my experience using most of these tools, is fairly recent and very exciting.  I started hearing about social bookmarking a couple of months ago. However, I did not have the time to start using it until the previous class session. Since then I have been exploring both Symbaloo and Delicious and I have also signed up for Diigo. I do not know if Pinterest is a social bookmark but I have also started to use it not long ago.  I find these tools brilliant. Not only do they help you save time by not having to look for the same resources several times, but they also help you save disk space and keep resources tidier. I am using Symbaloo to organize and access my high-frequency websites and to look for Webmixes that might interest me. Thanks to the possibility of tagging websites, I am using Delicious to classify and tidy specific resources and information that I encounter in a different way. And I am using Pinterest to look for inspiration and information in a more visual way.

In regard to social networks, I created my Twitter and LinkedIn account a couple of years ago. But I have not used them too much since. I used to think that Facebook and Twitter were almost the same. However, the last class made me see that Twitter can be very useful when it is professionally oriented. Now I am following classmates, teachers, educational platforms and influential educators; and they are helping me to be updated and in the loop. I used to use LinkedIn, but I stopped because of the free version limitations. Nevertheless, I want to open myself to unexpected national and international work opportunities. So I will try again and see if there is a way to overcome these limitations.

I know that we are not supposed to talk about RSS. But I wanted to comment that I am really enjoying Feedly and Flipboard. Usually I read a lot of articles on my computer and mobile phone. The problem was that I did not have a fast and convenient way to automatically follow blogs, find articles by topic and store the ones that I like. I am using Feedly to follow the updates of different blogs and websites, and Flipboard to find articles in a more visual way and create my own clippings magazines by topics.

To sum it all up, I love teaching, I love life and I love these tools! They make technological daily life easier, richer and more organized. They help you be updated about innovations and events. They give you national and international projection. And they are fun!