SYMBALOO

I chose the Social Learning Site, Symbaloo to use during this semester. My first reactions to this site are that it has so many different options and categories to help children learn. As I dug a little deeper into the site, I started playing some of the games that Symbaloo offers. I enjoyed every game I played and the amount I played did not even scratch the surface of how much potential this Social Learning Site has. For example, I played a geography game through the Turtle Diary icon on the EDU tab on my account and this game made you categorize different countries by their flag or the country/continent shaded in on a map. I found this game very interesting and embarrassingly enough hard to successfully complete. I am excited that I picked this one and I feel like a guinea pig testing this site for my future students. Below I will answer 3 of the questions given in this assignment.

What’s the End Goal of the Website?

In my opinion, the end goal of this Social Learning Website is to assist and help students better themselves in many subjects throughout many ages. The age range I noticed so far is usually between Kindergarten and Sixth Grade. With those years there are many subjects and topics to cover, so there are a wide variety of learning options to be able to suit any student. The success is the number one goal of this Site.

Is the User Experience Pleasant and Intuitive?

So far my brief experience with Symbaloo has indeed been pleasant and Intuitive. I agree with how the site is setup with various Icons to pick from. There seems to be ways to customize this site to personal likings which is great in my opinion. When I took some time to explore Symbaloo further, it sucked me in for a good 30 minutes with just testing out some of the various games. And there is so much more that seems like can be completed on this Site. For example, when I clicked on the Turtle Diary Icon, it takes me to that home page and I see grades to pick from and various subject/topics to pick from. That is all just in 1 icon! I find that pretty awesome and helpful for students, teachers and parents. I am starting to wish I had more of these technology advances when I was growing up. I also got excited because a game I played back in the 1990s when I was in Elementary School was called Math Blaster and Symbaloo has an updated version of this game which is so neat. I have not been able to play this updated version yet, but definitely plan on trying it. I also feel that if I pay for a membership, I will be able to benefit from a whole lot more.

How can this site help you in the future?

I feel that Symbaloo will end up being extremely beneficial to me, but even more for my future students. I would want nothing less than to see my future students being successful at anything I throw their way. I feel that being able to test this site out for myself during this semester will help me learn about Social Learning Sites and how to make my way around Symbaloo to make it work the best for myself. My future students could use this site in class for practice, at home to keep practicing or as additional assistance if they are struggling with a certain topic, etc. I see this site as being fun to use and I can also see children enjoying this playful learning site.