CONFUSED?????

Hopefully this explanation will help you to understand (as well as serve as an example of how you can post teacher or student-created materials into a tile, even if you do not have your own website...this was created as a Google Drive document and then linked using the url address). WELCOME to the Dulaney Symbaloo Home Webmix! This message is meant to do two things: 1. to assist you in navigation of all of my public webmixes (Navigation) starting with the home webmix and 2. to explain why I have organized these various webmixes in the first place. I begin with the latter. (If you do not know much about Symbaloo yet, take a short break and go to the Dulaney Symbaloo Webmix http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/coordinatingyourcloud and view the top row of videos to the right of my photo tile as an overview). Yes,some tiles on this webmix purposefully do not open, because they are proprietary curriculum or secure links. Sorry.. WHY DO DULANEY WEBMIXES USE BROWN?? (YUCK!) Well, at first, I was copying from others (which saves a lot of your soooo precious teacher or student time) and embedding my own links (usually at a training or via Edmodo referrals. This is one case in which it is NOT plagiarism to copy. I am purposefully sharing my ideas about connecting Web 2.0 tools with you, as are any Symbaloo users who share publicly. We DO NOT own the links or the webmixes, and if someone shares it publicly, it is for your use, including all of the webmixes that I have made public AND their cross-connectivity. Webmixes that are shared are not a guarantee of safety on the web (so I take NO responsibility for each tile), but they allow for guidance toward content that YOU as the teacher wish for students to see. Copying my stuff is just a jumping off point. And, if your district should so choose, this is also a tool for students to create their own favorites, review sources, practice activities, selfassess, or develop an online student portfolio. I thought about how I could use Symbaloo and realized that because Symbaloo embeds one set of favorites into another and this does not have to be a one time link or remain a linear connection (like folders and some other Web 2.0 organizers), Symbaloo can create a web of favorites that are personally organized for EACH teacher or student. A giant lightbulb went off! This would be a great way for an entire school or district to organize IT tools for teachers, PD, and for teachers to link for vertical alignment, cross-curricular connections, differentiation for SpEd, GT, and even TDK (Traditionally Developing Kids). So, I linked my own set of webmixes and labeled them with my name (Dulaney), NOT so that I could be cited with their creation, but so that users from my district could change the navigational tiles (the brown buttons with blue Symbaloo centers) to their own labeling and know that it was these ugly brown Dulaney tiles that are the ones that NEED to be changed to avoid relinking back to my original version. Dont freak if you are new to this! You can use my webmixes and connections without

changes at all, but are subject to my own choices and changes. This will all be clear after you explore Dulaney Symbaloo (my Symbaloo training mix of videos and resources to learn Symbaloo referenced in blue above) and get a chance to play around a little. So, the ugly brown can go away or you can change it to your own image, symbol, or color. The main purpose of the brown buttons which I call navigation tilesis to CHANGE your screen (either a jump to another webmix or a change of the center widget). SOME CLASSROOM STRATEGIES FOR WEBMIXES What if every webmix could have a single activity link or each tile in one webmix could be labeled in a certain order, so that students could follow a sort of scavenger hunt of activities to attain a learning goal? Imagine that homebound student, flipped classroom, or young actor receiving not only the current lesson, but remedial OPTIONS to review and content at the NEXT level based on their schedule. After a Differentiated Instruction training with Betty Hollas, I had another ah-ha moment when I realized that webmixes could also be oriented toward different levels of readiness, different learning styles, and different interests. As a teacher, you may not have the time to do this, but the beauty of Symbaloo is that we dont all have to create everything. If one teacher builds a science Symbaloo webmix for a 4th grade auditory learner with dyslexia who has skills in multiplication, but is still confused about fractions and then shares this mix publicly with the tags 4th grade, auditory, dyslexia, fractions, it would be a searchable mix for anyone else that has that mix in a student. How great would that be?! NAVIGATION (OR HOW TO USE DULANEYS WEBMIX TILE PLACEMENT SYSTEM) We arent quite individualized with webmixes YET, but my hope is that eventually a number of people will use a uniform placement and coding system (to limit the number of changes required when copying from one person to another, especially when sharing in a district). If there is some consistency between webmixes, then when you move individual tiles from mix to mix, they are already the correct color for that level of learning throughout your school district.. Colors could be chunked into a rectangular red group and then an orange group, rather than a row, but preferably with the same general movement of left to right and top to bottom rows, used to encourage literacy skills (at least in the US). I chose the colors from top to bottom using ROYGBV (optics science or art teacher mnemonic for the colors of the rainbow). If you take a look at my GT webmix you will see that I based it on Blooms (I may reverse this at a later date to have higher Blooms at the top, but want to do other organization first). Black tiles are teacher info for now (eventually will make separate mixes for the teacher to use) and white are either videos, mid-level Blooms, or yet to be organized at this date. I have begun to use similar symbols for similar content in SOME of the content areas. So, for example, basic knowledge of astronomy vocabulary might use a star symbol, and a synthesis project created after content delivery/explanation for 5E model would be blue, but with the same star symbol. A Unit or lesson could have all of its resources in one webmix from left to right based on content, but top to bottom based on Blooms taxonomy. See GT webmix: http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/dulaneygt I welcome further questions via Edmodo or Project Share IN THE SUMMER. Remember that I need to focus on my students during the school year! This page is intended to assist you as

best as I can for those who have had questions. Feel free to join my Symbaloo Project Share group and discuss with fellow group members, but I must admit to being a lazy moderator. Again, my students come first until summer. Have a great school year!:) Joelle Dulaney