Content-integration platform Symbaloo today announced that it is offering its PRO version to all educators at no cost for the duration of the school closings caused by the coronavirus. Existing users can upgrade to PRO with no additional charge, and educators without existing accounts can sign up for free.
“Symbaloo is committed to helping educators and students,” said Symbaloo’s CEO, Klaas Lameijer. “We believe we have to take responsibility in this time of urgency. We hope that our distance-learning tools will allow the learning to continue under these extraordinary circumstances, and we hope to inspire other companies to provide their education resources to teachers, as well.”
A trusted resource with more than 10 million users, Symbaloo allows educators to create webmixes and Learning Paths for students. Webmixes are collections of links to websites, videos, documents, and articles that function as a homepage for educators.
Learning Paths are board game-style online lesson plans that encourage students to continue learning at their own pace. Educators can build paths by adding videos, documents, assessment questions, articles, and educational games that guide students from start to finish. Learning Paths also provide educators real-time analytics showing students’ progress, time spent on assignments, and how they’re doing on assessments.
For educators who are new to the platform, Symbaloo has created a series of video tutorials to help them get started. If they don’t have the time to create their own content yet, they can find a wide variety of open-source educational resources in the Symbaloo Marketplace. The platform has a gallery of 400,000 webmixes and 7,500 Learning Paths that are searchable by grade level and subject.
Once educators have the webmixes and Learning Paths they need, they can distribute them through Google Classroom or by simply sharing a link with students via email or social media. Students can start learning right away, without setting up an account.
“In this time of school closures, the continuity of learning is priority number one,” said Jim Peterson, the chief technology officer of District 87 in Bloomington, Illinois. “We’re delivering content and tools through one Symbaloo platform, so teachers and students know where to go and work efficiently and effectively.”
To further support educators, Symbaloo is also working to curate and deliver two helpful webmixes: one that offers educational content about the coronavirus itself, and another that compiles edtech tools and initiatives that are offering free resources to educators.
“Making a quick transition from in-person to distance learning is an enormous challenge,” Lameijer concluded. “We hope that teachers will not only use the free tools we’re offering, but also share them with their colleagues, so that we can all do the very best we can for our students.”
About Symbaloo
Symbaloo is a content-integration platform where teachers use webmixes to store and share resources, and Learning Paths to blend their resources into lessons. Webmixes allow teachers to create visual bookmarks that help them organize their resources, save them in the cloud, and access them from anywhere, with any device. Symbaloo Learning Paths are customizable progressions that incorporate both instruction and assessment to enable teachers to track students’ progress in real time. With Symbaloo PRO, schools and districts can share all their resources on one or multiple personalized domain(s) and enable teacher collaboration to create and deliver personalized content for every student. To learn more, please visit Symbaloo.com.
