Thing 6: Curation Tools
Or, how I finally had an a-ha moment and am finally embracing a bookmarking system, namely Symbaloo...
Okay. So I've dabbled with curation tools on and off for years (which is why I still get emails for Diigo in Education, even though I haven't touched Diigo in years), but I've generally not been very good at them. I have to admit, sometimes I'm a bit SQUIRREL when it comes to finding things and curating them. Part of me worried that if I embraced a personalized bookmarking system, it might go away (I'm looking at you, iGoogle), but then again, some sites are still around (Portaportal, anyone?). A couple of things made me recently start to finally do a mind-shift to, "oh, hey, maybe having some kind of go-to-bookmarking tool that I use consistently, on all devices, might be a good idea"...
One, I tend to have folks snicker a little at all of my open tabs at the top of my page. Historically, I've had lots and lots of tabs open. It's generally never bothered me (I know I'm rather visual and out-of-sight-is-out-of-mind), but recently, Captain Unix (software engineer hubby) laughed at my endless open tabs, and I don't know why, but this time it began a flickering of unease in my brain. Why was he making fun of my tabs? I like my tabs. Of course, what tabs I have open varies from my PC to my work laptop to my home laptop...
...And then my aging home laptop decided to do a random major Windows update and wiped out a lot of my stuff. It was my own fault. I tend to have a lot of my tabs in Chrome's Incognito mode because I don't like doing Google searches and then shopping in Amazon or going onto Facebook and seeing things in there that I was just searching for. Which is fine until your PC crashes or does a major update and wipes out everything. (The downside of Incognito is that, well, it's not tracking your searching history. Bye-bye, tabs.)
On a related note, my older daughter is home from college, and as she was recently online shopping on her computer and showing me her finds, I happened to notice her giant list of bookmarked links on the right side of the screen. Holy cow. It was the mother of all bookmark lists. I wondered, how would I ever find anything in a list that long? I'll stick with my million tabs, thank you very much.
And then one of my former colleagues in my old district, where I currently do technology integration, asked if I would show her PLC group around Symbaloo to help them build bookmark webmixes, and I said sure. I've played around with Symbaloo before. But this time, when I opened Symbaloo (and started an educational account) and started re-exploring this tool, something clicked. O. M. G.
I'm thinking that Symbaloo might be a game changer for me. Symbaloo allows the user to create visual grids of bookmarks. The user can group the bookmarks in a variety of ways. There are tabs with pre-set webmixes (most of which I'll probably delete, but I like the visual suggestions), and then you can also create custom webmixes. You can color-code the little squares. You can search or or create icons for them. (They provide icons for you, or you can upload images, which I prefer, because I'm visual and I want my little squares to look just like what they represent.) You can create links to special items (like a specific Google Form, or LibGuide) and share a webmix with your students. There is so much more that I don't even know about yet. BUT IT'S ALL VISUAL. I like that.
So, I'm slowly letting go of my tabs. Before I let them go, I'm creating little squares for them in Symbaloo webmixes, and then I'm okay with closing out the tabs. I bookmarked Symbaloo onto each of my devices. It's great.
And tonight, I just discovered that there's a Symbaloo iPhone app. It's now synced with the Symbaloo webmixes that I've already created. I think I hear angelic singing right now... :)
Okay. So I've dabbled with curation tools on and off for years (which is why I still get emails for Diigo in Education, even though I haven't touched Diigo in years), but I've generally not been very good at them. I have to admit, sometimes I'm a bit SQUIRREL when it comes to finding things and curating them. Part of me worried that if I embraced a personalized bookmarking system, it might go away (I'm looking at you, iGoogle), but then again, some sites are still around (Portaportal, anyone?). A couple of things made me recently start to finally do a mind-shift to, "oh, hey, maybe having some kind of go-to-bookmarking tool that I use consistently, on all devices, might be a good idea"...
One, I tend to have folks snicker a little at all of my open tabs at the top of my page. Historically, I've had lots and lots of tabs open. It's generally never bothered me (I know I'm rather visual and out-of-sight-is-out-of-mind), but recently, Captain Unix (software engineer hubby) laughed at my endless open tabs, and I don't know why, but this time it began a flickering of unease in my brain. Why was he making fun of my tabs? I like my tabs. Of course, what tabs I have open varies from my PC to my work laptop to my home laptop...
...And then my aging home laptop decided to do a random major Windows update and wiped out a lot of my stuff. It was my own fault. I tend to have a lot of my tabs in Chrome's Incognito mode because I don't like doing Google searches and then shopping in Amazon or going onto Facebook and seeing things in there that I was just searching for. Which is fine until your PC crashes or does a major update and wipes out everything. (The downside of Incognito is that, well, it's not tracking your searching history. Bye-bye, tabs.)
On a related note, my older daughter is home from college, and as she was recently online shopping on her computer and showing me her finds, I happened to notice her giant list of bookmarked links on the right side of the screen. Holy cow. It was the mother of all bookmark lists. I wondered, how would I ever find anything in a list that long? I'll stick with my million tabs, thank you very much.
And then one of my former colleagues in my old district, where I currently do technology integration, asked if I would show her PLC group around Symbaloo to help them build bookmark webmixes, and I said sure. I've played around with Symbaloo before. But this time, when I opened Symbaloo (and started an educational account) and started re-exploring this tool, something clicked. O. M. G.
I'm thinking that Symbaloo might be a game changer for me. Symbaloo allows the user to create visual grids of bookmarks. The user can group the bookmarks in a variety of ways. There are tabs with pre-set webmixes (most of which I'll probably delete, but I like the visual suggestions), and then you can also create custom webmixes. You can color-code the little squares. You can search or or create icons for them. (They provide icons for you, or you can upload images, which I prefer, because I'm visual and I want my little squares to look just like what they represent.) You can create links to special items (like a specific Google Form, or LibGuide) and share a webmix with your students. There is so much more that I don't even know about yet. BUT IT'S ALL VISUAL. I like that.
So, I'm slowly letting go of my tabs. Before I let them go, I'm creating little squares for them in Symbaloo webmixes, and then I'm okay with closing out the tabs. I bookmarked Symbaloo onto each of my devices. It's great.
And tonight, I just discovered that there's a Symbaloo iPhone app. It's now synced with the Symbaloo webmixes that I've already created. I think I hear angelic singing right now... :)
Glad that you’ve found a tool that works well for you!
ReplyDelete