3x3 Links

3x3 Links

3x3Links.com is a great application site to use with younger students. The site will let you organize favorite  sites that you visit or want students to access at any given time. The premise is that you are allowed to post 9 links in squares (or cubes). Google uses what is referred to as a "speed-dial" when you open a new tab. This is simply the thumbnail view of sites you visited recently. Well 3x3 is connected to Google and it all works by letting you speed-dial favorite sites. That is, once you launch the application these predefined sites will be displayed in 9 different cubicles, and they can be browsed by using the number pad in your keyboard. This is obviously faster than using your mouse to point and click on the relevant icon when using smart devices or laptops but your desktop mouse or mouse pad works just as well. The images that are displayed in each one of these spaces are not thumbnails but rather the logos of the sites and if the logo is missing, you can simply upload it yourself. You can have more than one 3×3 Links page so you can keep content links in folders or on pages. You can also make each square a folder that links to another page. The image above  has logos for sites and folder links like Science, Reading, etc. The Science cube will take you to a new page with up to 9 cubes for links or additional folders. I like this set up because it is very minimal and does not have a lot of fluff on the page that is distracting, it is tied to your Google account, and it is very simple to change a cube to a new link once you start a new unit or topic....ENJOY!