Yes you read that correctly, now try to work out what I am actually talking about… Well I am talking about the free web 2.0 tool called 3 x 3 Links: http://www.3x3links.com/index.html
I was first shown this by Ian Addison a primary teacher and ICT Coordinator from Hampshire at the Northern Grid for Learning Annual Conference in June this year. Ian is a great bloke and I was bowled over by his enthusiasm and passion. If you don’t know Ian then I urge you to check out his blog: http://ianaddison.net/ or another really useful website that he set up is http://www.undertenminutes.com/ where you can watch how to tutorial videos (all under ten minutes) on many different web tools, I love this site it is brilliant! You can also follow Ian on twitter as @ianaddison.
What is 3 x 3 Links?
It is basically a free website that allows you to organise your favourite websites into small keyboard shortcuts, all you need is a Google account to automatically sign in. When Ian first showed this I thought ok that looks good so I can organise some of my favourite websites but I can do that in so many other ways anyway – what opportunities could I use this in the classroom to impact on the learning of my students. Ian talked about some examples and it gave me an idea for one of my classes in September.
Using it in the classroom
So I am about to start a topic on the arguments for and against cloning, my students will be writing presentations to debate this topic, instead of just allowing them to research completely independently on the internet which this particular group struggles with I can scaffold for those more dependent learners to point them in the right direction. So today I researched this myself and selected a range of nine suitable websites that I would like them to look at, I then created my 3×3 Link for this which you can see pictured below:
This took me only about ten minutes to do it was so easy, however I want to share this 3 x 3 page with all my students so they can use it to carry out the research more effectively. This can be done by creating your own unique URL which I did by clicking on the options tab and going to create personal links – it really is that easy. You can check out the live link below:
http://www.3x3links.com/cloning2
There are probably so many other ways you could use this in the classroom, I think it is a brilliant tool and shall be using it in September. Do you use this already? How are you using it?