It would be easier to explain how
Stormboard works if we imagine it as a virtual white board. We can brainstorm
and write our ideas on memos of different colours, and then put on the white
board.
I've used Stormboard for the first time last week and found it very useful in helping students develop their writing skills
and collaboration skills. I like that we do not need to be physically
confined to the same place while brainstorming ideas. It is usually very
time-consuming when we need to sit together and talk about our ideas.
The beauty of this digital white board is
that we not only can add our ideas but also elaborate and discuss them. There
is a speech bubble on each sticky note, a chat box will be opened up once we
click it. Then we can start discussing on the topic. We can also put relevant information
on the Sticky notes, such as videos and images and mention hyperlinks.
Stormboard is more than a white board as
there are a lot of templates to help us organize our ideas, and you can modify
the templates to suit your needs. For example, my groupmates and I chose a
regular template with three sections and deleted one section because we thought
we would only use one for brainstorm and one for the writing. Students may need
more sections if they are engaged in a process writing as they may need to
write the draft, edited version and the final version for publish. Those
templates are useful in helping students structure their writing. If they have
to decide on ideas to be included in their writing, they can even use the
voting function of Stormboard. The Stormboard created can be exported as PDF,
Powerpoint, Word and Excel files. Students can bring it to their meeting or
hand it in to their teachers for comments. Besides, Stormboard is very
convenient as it works on tablets, smartphones and desktops, you can put up
your ideas whenever and wherever the inspiration strikes you. I personally
think it is very easy to use and will introduce to my students for their
writing tasks.
Cullen, Kullman and Wild (2013) have conducted an online collaborative project to illustrate the benefits of such tasks. They used wiki in their project and I think Stormboard may be even better as it is visually more appealing, and have some features like the chat box and voting functions as mentioned above. If you are my classmates the article is on Moodle (week 3).
Benefits
-
Allow students to work
collaboratively without being physically confined to the same place
-
Help organize ideas with colour
coded sticky notes and templates
-
Helps the exchange of information
as the content posted can be in varied forms, such as images, videos and so on
-
Even though users can edit the
Stormboard at different times, it may be more effective if they are all online
at the same time and discuss their ideas
-
Students need to express their
ideas in written form. Those who are weaker in writing may find it hard to
express their opinions
-
Students who type slowly may
not be able to contribute as much as the others in discussion
- Flipped classroom: at the beginning of a unit or module, students can be given the theme or the topic that they will learn, and they post their ideas about the topic, and find some relevant information online and share them using the sticky notes. This is usually done in the class to activate students' schemata and let teachers know how much students have already known about the topic.
- Teacher con-constructs the writing with class as a model of their writing. Teachers usually do this in class with the board but once the lesson is finished, the writing will be erased and students can no longer look at it again. Although this can be solved by writing on a flipped-chart and post the writing on the wall, students still can't see it when they leave the classroom. Stormboard would be useful as the writing can be exported as PDF or other files. Students can keep it for their reference.
Visit the official website of Stormboard to find out more!
Update on 13/2/18
I particularly like Nusrat's sample task. Should definitely check it out when you have time!
I like Stormboard too since I even brainstorm when I'm working alone. And one good thing I like Stormboard is that once students finished their board, it can be printed out immediately as a piece of work where teachers could ask students to move on with a further topic basing on this one. When class is over, students may find themselves finished a set of topics related step by step and this papers would be a summary and remind for this lesson. Isn't that beautiful?
ReplyDeleteYea if it can be exported and printed out that will be great! Students don't have to look at the screen all the time if their writing task is done by paper and pen.
DeleteI agree that it is a great collaboration tool that can transcend the limitations of time and place. Flipped classrooms are effective in saving time and covering syllabi. It should also allow teachers to keep track of who is doing what and sort of customise the scaffolding they may need. Would it be useful to team students with the same rate of work to avoid the clouding of those who type slowly or aren't too good at him?
ReplyDeletemeant '....too good at it.'
DeleteI think it will be nice to group students with different ability in the same group actually so that they can help each other. Otherwise some groups will finish their work really fast and have nothing else to do, while the weaker groups will be struggling. I do agree that if students can't type that fast they may not contribute as much as the others in their group, but isn't this a good opportunity to let us remind them (and ourselves too!) we're all different and have different strengths, and we need to learn how to work with other people? Those who type really fast need to learn to be patient and those who type slowly need to try and keep up with the groupmates.
Delete