Does anyone know what day it is? These past few weeks of staying at home to help flatten the curve during this global pandemic have left many of us feeling out of sorts without our daily routines. In all seriousness, though, I do hope that you are well and that you have not been directly affected by Covid-19. I am grateful to be able to report that my family and I are well, despite the challenges of finding our new "normal". As a teacher, I am finding it just as challenging, as I presume many teachers are as well. However, I thought I would share a handy tool that I have been using over the years to support my students at home. It is called Symbaloo, a social bookmarking site that allows you to manage all your online resources by creating visually appealing webmixes that can be shared, updated, and even embedded into a web site.

In the Symbaloo webmix that I share with my French students in grades 1 to 4, I have collected a series of Quizlet study cards, where they can listen to the French pronunciation, play matching games or customize their own auto-graded tests. Many of them are based on popular themes, as seen on the top two rows (see below), and I have also included a handful of AIM Language vocabulary lists for La poule Maboule, Le petit chat, Où est mon chien? and Les trois petits cochons. In addition, I've thrown in a couple of Kahoot challenges, audiobooks and a collection of some of my favourite French songs on Youtube, which are embedded directly in the webmix to avoid opening multiple windows.

Previously, I would share the link to my Symbaloo webmix using a customized shortened URL (bit.ly/prfrench) but sometimes students will click on the advertisements. As a work-around, you can embed your webmix into a website or blog, so I created a Google Site for that very reason. I have also embedded my webmix below so you can access a variety of online French activities. I hope that it may come in handy for your own children who are learning French. Feel free to share and stay well, mes amis!

For the longest time, I have been thinking about how I can share useful websites with my students and their parents to help them practice their French at home. This is guaranteed to be on every parent's mind when they come in for curriculum night and parent-teacher interviews. In the past, I have resorted to providing a brochure with some links typed up but the urls were often lengthy or, in some cases, they would no longer work. Then there was always the possibility of the brochure being misplaced. For the most part, I would list general sites since in any given year I could be teaching grade 1 all the way to grade 8. This was clearly not the best option for sharing online resources with parents. This is why I am making the switch to Symbaloo EDU. 

Symbaloo EDU is a free social bookmarking site that allows to you manage all your resources in the cloud by creating visually appealing webmixes that can be shared, updated, and even embedded into a web site. They can be accessed anywhere through the Internet and on any device. You can also created "lesson plans" that will guide students from tile to tile, where you can direct them to a useful website, have them watch an embedded video, embed a file from your Google Drive and have them complete a quiz before advancing to the next tile, all at their own pace. Finally, teachers can create their own Personal Teaching/Learning Environments and use them as their homepage for quick access to educational sites and resources.

Above is an example of Symbaloo EDU webmix I created for my Primary French students complete with fun videos and several Quizlets on key vocabulary we cover throughout the year. The best part is that I can add to or edit it whenever I like and they will always have the most updated links. 

Tip: You can create a customized shortened url so that parents and students can easily remember it. I use bit.ly: bit.ly/prfrench

If you've been using Symbaloo.com and are curious about how it differs from Symbaloo EDU, the main difference is the content that you start with. SymbalooEDU accounts come with preset educational webmixes preinstalled that are continuously updated with the latest and greatest educational sites recommended by Symbaloo Certified educators, such as yours truly.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to attempt my first French Symbaloo EDU lesson plan. If you are an FSL teacher who has already completed one, feel free to share via the comments below.

Sometimes I think I make a better student than a teacher. And I am pretty much convinced that, if I were a student in this day in age, I would be thriving and having the time of my life. It's the geek in me that finds herself drawn to all things techy and for that I make no apologies. But information and computer technology has changed a whole lot since I was a kid where keyboarding was an actual course you could take in high school and Qbasic was the code of the times. I know. I just dated myself. 

Yet, here's the thing: How can we possibly prepare our students for a future that will be so tech driven, in a world where the careers they will pursue likely don't yet exist, if we fail to embrace educational technology into our teaching practices? This is why I was so eager to complete an additional qualification on Information and Computer Technology part 1 last winter. I am also planning on taking part 2 this summer, updating my Google Educator status to Google Certified Educator and completing an online EdTechTeam bootcamp course on HyperDocs. So when I learned that Symbaloo EDU offered a certification program, I had to jump right on it, too. It was fairly straightforward and easy to do but it also inspired me to try new things with Symbaloo EDU. I can't wait to play around with their new Lesson Plans feature! In the meantime, you can read about how I plan on using Symbaloo EDU to share useful French sites with parents and students, and have a peak at my Personal Teaching/Learning Environment.