A running theme this week has been that of organisation: in our class on Innovation and ICT, we looked at Symbaloo, a tool which can visually organise links and other resources in a categorised, visually-apealling way; meanwhile, in Educational Research, our teacher advised us on the necessity of keeping our references, research plans, and notes thoroughly organised with tools like Mendeley.
I have to be honest: I'm someone who loves taking notes the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper, complemented with use of bookmarks and reference libraries. It works for me, but I've had decades of life experience to develop my own personal, sometimes idiosyncratic, ways of organising information: what about my students, who are just beginning that process?
I think that's the main use I personally see in a tool like Symbaloo: the ability to create a dynamic library of resources for my students. For example, I always recommend the fantastic Flo-Joe to any students preparing for Cambridge exams, but they don't always necessarily remember it. That's not their fault: on the one hand, secondary students are faced with a constant barrage of information, tasks, recommendations from multiple teachers every day; on the other, many haven't yet figured out their own strategies for organising that information. Something like Symbaloo would help to provide something of a "hub" to keep at least part of that information visible, and clearly accessible.
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