- At first, it appeared that I had lost my following and statistics with the move. Symbaloo has been in contact with me on this and they are working on fixing this situation. If possible, this will be a minor hiccup and not one that should discourage anyone from using Symbaloo Premium. I do not believe that this situation would affect anyone else and we will chalk this up to
Murphy'sMortensen's Law. :) I will report on the outcome of this. - I really do like the interface of the premium version. It is really geared toward providing a great setup for educators who want to publish a professional library of resources. The branding is a nice touch and makes the set of webmixes look more professional.
- The best ability that I gained with the premium version is that I can simply reorder my webmixes by dragging and dropping them in a list. This saves enormous trouble because of the current interface design of horizontal tabs of webmixes.
- My second favorite feature is that anyone who registers an account on MyWeb4Ed Symbaloo's site gets all of my webmixes automatically added to their account.
- The ability to make one webmix the main webmix is a nice feature and I've used it to create a sort of Table of Contents for my other webmixes. You can see this by visiting my Symbaloo account at http://myweb4ed.symbaloo.com.
Some unique caveats to the Symbaloo Premium Account -
- Your personal webmixes must be monitored from a separate account. So, I created an additional account on my own site and have my personal webmixes there as well as all of my professional webmixes which come automatically with new accounts at my site. This may seem strange and it took me a few weeks to figure out the process that was needed but now that I have, it is not a problem. If you were to go premium, you want to do so because you plan on having a professional webmix library for your students and/or the public. It really is not intended for personal use but the solution is easy enough.
- I am concerned about monitoring who creates accounts at my site. I am assuming a teacher who gets this would like to allow his or her students to create Symbaloo accounts at their premium site so that the students would have their own resources as well as those the instructor created for them. However, I'm not sure how one manages this unless there is an approval code or process that controls the process. In addition, I would like the ability to remove any inappropriate webmixes, especially if they are branded with my name. I might be missing something (it would not be the first time, LOL) so I'll turn to Symbaloo to explain how this process is controlled and managed.
One remaining interface problem on all Symbaloo account types:
- Symbaloo has worked with me and created a (sort of) solution for the horizontal tabs that span my window and exceed far beyond it because of my many, many webmixes. I can simply begin typing a webmix name in the "Search for tiles" field and it pops up. But, it really isn't an elegant solution. Ideally, I would have a listing to the left or right of my webmix with alphabetically linked webmixes. Possibly I could categorize them so Math teachers could find my Math webmixes and Science teachers my Sciene webmixes easily.
I am still a loyal fan of Symbaloo as evidenced by the 80 (Yes, 80) webmixes that I currently have. Some are not available for public view and some are my holding places for the bookmarks I intend to share out on developing webmixes. The time invested clearly shows my dedication and love for this site. They have worked with me and continue to work with me to create solutions to the problems. Of course, as a busy educator, I would like it done yesterday! :) That is my own issue, of course.
I suspect that Symbaloo is well on its way to becoming an educational powerhouse for resource management.
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