Stormboard: why not try to brainstorm together!

It has been many weeks since I published my first blog. If you can see this one and decide to read it, I bet you really love my blogs and have checked many times to find something new! This time I am going to introduce an online collaboration tool called Stormboard. 

You know what? I took part in many market competitions in my undergraduate period. I got exhausted from having meetings with team members for hours to discuss the themes of the advertising case planning. We raised our own ideas separately and then the other team members commented on the ideas until we got one theme that was acceptable to all the members. We didn't use any tools to record the discussion process or organize different ideas. When I look back at how we carried out the discussion, I found it a little bit hilarious because we were always in chaos😂. If I knew the existence of Stormboard at that time, we would have carried out the meetings in a smoother way.

(Click here to go to the website and try it yourself!)

📑What is Stormboard?

Stormboard is a simultaneous collaboration tool that can be used to organize meetings, brainstorms, and projects in a much more effective way. People can use it to carry out seamless remote collaboration in any electric device, which breaks the boundary of time and distance, for all the ideas proposed in the meetings will be saved automatically and all the team members are free to check and comment anytime.

💎Evaluation of Stormboard

Home page of Stormboard

• 

  
  

  
  

  It is friendly for new users.

When I signed in to the Stormboard home page for the first time, a short video popped out, giving the new users a short introduction to the main functions of Stormboard. We can also notice that there are three videos at the most eye-catching part of the entire home page, showing that this tool attaches great importance to helping the users get familiar with the tool in a short time, which matches its market positioning as an effective and time-saving assistant.

• It contains tons of free templates.

Moreover, Stormboard offers many free templates for users to choose from, and they are organized according to various intended use, such as for problem-solving, design thinking, brainstorming, education, and so on, so whatever your aim is, you may be able to find a suitable template.

• It has handwriting areas.

The picture below is a screenshot of the discussion page of me and my team members. We talked about how Stormboard could be used in ELT classes. We typed our ideas on this whiteboard and even made some drawings! Look at the smile, isn't it cute? This whiteboard offers more possibilities for participants who want to write down something casually during the meeting.

💟Using Stormboard in my context

• As an icebreaking tool

As you know, the covid pandemic has been having a great influence on our lives. China sticks to trying her best to prevent the widespread of the virus. Since schools and universities are always crowded when students take offline courses, they are often asked to take online lessons as a necessary protection for themselves. Most universities overseas also adopt a blended teaching system to protect the health of the students and the staff. This leads to the problem that it is not easy for students to make friends with their classmates, since they just need to watch their own computer screens without talking to others. However, Stormboard can make a difference. It has many icebreaking templates which help the students to get acquainted with each other. Students can answer the questions simultaneously by writing sticky notes in Stormboard, and all the others can see it and know more about one another. For example, this template in the picture has sections of names, a truth-or-lie game zone, and sharing favorite emojis. It is a good way to make friends.

• As a teaching assistant

Teachers can design a template themselves, dividing the sections based on different questions that the teacher wants to explore more with the students. Students can just join in the storm and post their own ideas. It can especially encourage students who do not dare to speak out their opinions in class. It is also helpful for the teachers to organize students' ideas and give feedback.

📚Stormboard and language learning

• Social interactionist theory 

The supporters of this theory believe that the process of socialization can influence the acquisition of the language. For sure, Stormboard, as a collaboration tool, can certainly stimulate the process of encouraging the students to build social relationships and have social interactions with others. 

• Language learning templates

There are many templates suitable for educational purposes. For example, there is a template with five sections including "Who, What, When, Why, Where, How". It can help the students to organize their understanding of a specific article or a topic. Teachers can also use its Word Wall template to collect all the useful words in a unit and build some connections among the words to help the students better understand the word and memorize them. 

💢 Limitations

• The free version of Stormboard has limits on some functions.

Its free version limits the number of participants under 5. Additionally, it allows the free users to create no more than 6 storms. In this way, teachers have to pay to upgrade to have unlimited participants and additional features.

• Participants can only write without a common voice call channel.

Writing is time-consuming, especially when you want to express some complicated ideas, but there is no button offering any audio transferring functions or calling functions. Participants may have to use another software to help them talk with each other.

You can click here to go to the website or copy this URL: https://www.stormboard.com/  and paste it into your browser!