4 great brainstorming apps for a collaborative classroom

Today, the idea of sharing knowledge has become a key to a more effective learning process. Learning from other people is better than learning on your own. Whether the ideas come from school, friends, television, fellow students,… interacting with these ideas helps you create your own.
Since sharing ideas is so important today, here are some great brainstorming tools that i’ll be going over.
Apps to support brainstorms and collaboration
1. Padlet
Padlet is a great tool for both students and teachers. With this tool you can create online boards that can be shared with both of them. It is simple and intuitive, you just have to share a link with them, and the tool allows you to insert ideas and responses anonymously or with your name.
Whoever has the board open on its computer, tablet or smartphone, can see what’s on it and what everyone is writing. Students can use this tool when collaborating during teamwork projects and the teacher can use it in order to do brainstormings on a topic in class.
What you can do is simply collect ideas when you find something interesting on the web, and use it during your lessons. All you have to do is save it to a Padlet board and the students can do the same.

2. iBrainstorm
IBrainstorm is an easy way to capture and share a student’s creative mind. Students with this app can invite up to 3 other students to participate in the brainstorming activity and can write and add notes to the board.
Students can start from scratch, or they can choose one of the 13 background templates. They can even brainstorm about anything, even how to put their football players on the field!

Image: Kristin Giorgio’s Professional Teaching Wiki
3. Google Docs
Google Docs is just like Word, but with a major twist. The change lies in the fact that you can work together on the same document at the same time from different devices. No more sending files back and forth, thankfully. But really, no more figuring out which file was the latest and every change is saved automatically, which avoids major disasters.
The question is : why is this a brainstorm app? I’ve decided to give Google Docs a place because it’s a great collaborative tool and it’s very intuitive and simple to use in order to brainstorm from home with other students over homeworks or new projects. Working together has never been so simple and fun.
Here’s a video to get a better idea of Google Docs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qTcDsbvbjk
4. Popplet
Popplet is perhaps the easiest tool so far to capture and organize ideas. In a few clicks on your device’s screen you can make “Popplets” (little squares) and add text and images. It’s easy to connect the Popplets, rearrange them, change their colour and even adjust their shape.
Popplet is awesome for learning school and even at home. Students use Popplet in order to think and learn visually and they learn to generate new ideas by capturing facts, thoughts, and images. They can also learn to make simple mind maps in just a few steps.

Article via Lucie Renard: https://www.bookwidgets.com/blog/2017/03/8-intuitive-brainstorm-apps-for-a-collaborative-classroom
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Eddy review all tech, software or hardware, teachers can use to take their courses to the next level.. You can follow Eddy on Twitter or Medium.

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