Sharing Web Resources with Early Primary Grade Students

When I was first grade teacher, I loved using technology with my students, but struggled for a good way to share specific bookmarked web resources with my students. Like many schools, classes in my school shared a cart of laptop computers. I found typing in web addresses to be too difficult for most young children. Manually adding bookmarks to each site was very time intensive and had to be repeated with each new site I found. in addition, early readers had a difficult time identifying the names of the sites without an identifying icon.

Working as a technology integration coach this year afforded a bit more time to consider the possibilities for k-1 teachers in my district. Recently, I found a solution that is working well.

I created a very simple website with a page on the site for each teacher in the building. I marked this website as the homepage for each computer in the cart. As a precaution, I also set it as a bookmark, and deleted all other default Apple bookmarks to clear away any confusing text.

Each teacher can create a Symbaloo (or comparable web page including links) containing the sites they desire for their class. Teachers send me the embed code for their site or Symbaloo webmix and I add it to the site. Any time a teacher finds a new site to use, they simply add it to their account. Once the changes are saved, it will be updated on all student computers instantly.

Students find the icons on Symbaloo easy to identify. They are able to click and find the desired website independently, which maximizes their learning time and simplifies the process for teachers!