Edistorm (http://www.edistorm.com/)
We've probably all brainstormed using a chalkboard or white-board, but have you tried doing this online? Consider using Edistorm. The classroom I teach in offers laptops to students as well as Internet access, so I decided to try Edistorm and found the program very useful.
Edistorm is a free, cloud-based program that utilizes a large, blank canvas and virtual Post-it notes. (Although you can also add videos and photographs.) I created a "storm" (it only takes a minute) before class began and invited the entire class by email. I would recommend having students create accounts before you need to use this program in the classroom. Then collect their user names and share the storm with them by typing in their user names. (This will make the process a little smother than my experience.)
For class that day we were coming up with topics for an informative speech. I had the students type in ideas and share them with the group. While they were typing in their ideas, I had the storm projected on the large screens in the classroom. This allowed me to walk around and talk about the ideas I saw appear on the screen. The students seemed to enjoy the process, and I know I did.
We then voted on ideas we liked--each person gets 10 votes. Edistorm allows you to sort the virtual Post-it notes by its rating and even allows you to see ideas that didn't get votes. Using the large screens, I was able to sort the ideas and initiate class discussion on what patterns we saw emerging and what speeches would be the most engaging.
At the end of the day I got an email from Edistorm giving me a report on who typed what idea. This was so helpful that I decided to use the same storm the next class period. I had the students use Edistorm to share their central ideas for the speech with the class. I then had students vote on their top 10 ideas and comment on all the others. Edistorm allows you to add comments to a note, so students typed in questions and ideas to share why they didn't find a particular speech topic as engaging as the others. Again, I got an email that day listing who commented on what idea.
It was so interesting to see how a student would ask a question on a note and the person who posted the note would respond. There are 24 students in my class and, by the end of the class, each student had feedback from multiple peers. We could also see what ideas were the most popular and what ideas needed to be more focused.
The downside to this was that some students had used their votes the day before, so they had to comment on more ideas than other students. Next time I'll delete the notes from the old storm before I create a new one.
Once they had their central ideas down, I used Edistorm once again. I had each student type in a one or two word note that pertained to the topic of their speech--words like film industry, music production, autism. Once all these ideas were posted I was able, with help from the class, to group topics that seemed related. These groups of four became "tribes" who were then seated together to form peer-support teams.
I really enjoyed using this program and intend to use it again in the future.
Here's a short tutorial on how Edistorm works:
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