Using Symbaloo for Distance Learning
Distance learning is something many of us never thought would be a part of this school year, but here we are. I never thought I’d be teaching using distance learning given the population of students I work with and the needs they have.
I got to thinking and remembered a tool called Symbaloo that I used back in 2014. You can read the blog post about it here. I also talked about it most recently on the Adaptation Station podcast in which I was a co-host and talked about how I am navigating distance learning. I wanted to share with you how I made it work for distance learning with my students.
What is Symbaloo?
Symbaloo is a FREE website with a dashboard that you can customize to put websites, documents, and videos that you may want parents and students to access. You can provide access to anyone that has the link that you have decided to share with them. You can also restrict sharing if you decide to do individual tabs with work for specific students if that is something that your district has asked you to do. It will give you the ability to keep things confidential so that families can’t see what the others are doing.
Important to Note:
**Please note, you need to have internet access to be able to reach the materials on this site. I used the printable materials on this and sent paper packets home to families. This allowed them to still use the same materials as their peers and this is the reason I provided both internet and paper options so all student can access.
Setting Up the Symbaloo for Distance Learning
The first step was to decide what materials to put on this. Referring to my classroom schedule helped think of things that could be done in the home. I came up with some categories and color coded the Symbaloo board like this:
Additionally, I started to put the “tiles” in that I wanted my students to complete for their distance learning. I felt like teaching my families to create a first, then board that you can get for FREE here or making a mini schedule that you could make by accessing this here was the best option. Then from there they could look at the different color coded sections and pick something to do from each of those each day. Depending on what your school district is asking of you this may work too.
When making the “tiles” they give you a ton of options to make it look how you need including things like text, colors, and image population. I decided to use a mixture of images that pre-populated once I put the website or document in and some of the symbols that the website has available for you to use. You can also create your own images and upload those onto the site as well.
I plan to change out some of these materials on a weekly basis and some of the materials will stay on the entire year, it is up to you how much you’d like to change things out but, for my students things like News2You and Work Tasks did change consistently in our classroom so I’m sticking with that strategy.
Here’s an example of the very simple schedule I used to give families could complete:
Once families had an idea of a schedule I told them to pick items from that section and complete it. They DO NOT complete everything but, because I have a wide range of learners I had to make it meet everyone. I made sure to help families to find specific materials their child could use. I will explain a little bit more about the sections that I created.
Learning Section of my Distance Learning Symbaloo
Everything in this is learning materials that we use in the classroom. There are websites that have links and documents that I saved on a google drive that I then could attach those links for families to download the documents onto their own devices.
- Morning Meeting interactive PDF that students used to do in the classroom everyday.
- L3Skills games from Unique Learning System
- Boom Cards from Boom Learning (You can read more about those here!)
- News2You Article for the Week and Worksheets
- Social Stories that I found on TPT by Martha Speech
Work Tasks Section of the my Distance Learning Symbaloo
Secondly, I needed a way for my students to have the “work task” time that they were used to completing in my classroom. You can read more about how I structured that in my classroom here.
There are digital products that are like the work tasks I would have my students complete at home. So, in this section I put digital task cards that are both interactive PDFS that are available on my store like these. I also put “Fast Pin” links to some Boom cards for my students.
Additionally, I even shared an example picture with parents of what a “work task” session looked like. Here’s an option of a visual mini schedule they could make like this:
Or if their student needed less to start it may look like this:
I really thought this was a great way to take something we were doing in the classroom. It helped to maintain some of the consistency my students were used to.
Paper Pencil Symbaloo Choices for Distance Learning
Obviously, we have families and students that prefer to use paper pencil. They also may want some options they can print and use anywhere. I utilized TPT and some freebies and materials I already had purchased in used in the classroom. So this section includes that.
- Hygiene Worksheets from Delightful Dedicated Special Ed. (PAID)
- Leveled Homework from The Autism Helper (PAID)
- Life Skills Cut and Paste from Adulting Made Easy (FREE)
- Visual Chores Choices from Adulting Made Easy (FREE)
All these materials are printable. I had multiple levels available so parents could find what works best for their child.
Information Section on My Symbaloo
Most likely, this section for you will be very specific to your school district and what you have been instructed to do but, for me I liked the idea of having a place where it all could be housed. Here is what’s in this section:
- Example Visual Schedules
- School District Website Link
- Username and Passwords to Websites
- Directions for Using other Platforms
- Demo Videos of using the Symbaloo
- Tips and Tricks for Instruction
Fun Symbaloo Choices, the Best Part!
Lastly, this section doesn’t really need much explanation, but essentially anything I felt like that my students would choose for “Earn Time” I placed in this tile and I also chose to “group” those items and hide them so my students wouldn’t be as enticed to go right to those items. Here is an image of the websites my students love!
Wrapping This all Up!
In conclusion, this was a giant blog post but, I thought this was the best way to explain what I am using for distance learning so that all my students can access materials. It was important for me to make it simple, but consistent with what we did in our classroom and I felt this was the best way. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about using this website!
I’ve also added this video to my youtube channel with some of the basic setup tips!
