Brainstorm and Debate Collaboratively

This morning I spotted Solvr on MakeUseOf and decided to give it a try. Solvr is a free easy and interesting way to collaboratively brainstorm and attempt to solve problems online.

It's very simple set up. You just got to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/ type your problem into the field and then click 'Start'.
You will then see your problem with a number of options underneath.


You can add different elements of the problem, make suggestions by adding ideas and leave comments.

The collaborative part comes in when you share the URL with someone, then other people can come and join in the problem solving and brainstorming. Here's the URL for the 'Making a living 'problem I set up.

I also set up a problem earlier on today, which was about integrating technology into the ELT classroom. I added a couple of elements of the problem and then posted it to Twitter. With a few minutes, the problem started to develop as people added in comments solutions, and even started to vote on the solutions.


If you would like to see how this problem is developing go to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/d/eltrilxlwu and feel free to contribute.

So how do we use this with students?
We can set up a whole range of debates and online collaborative tasks.

• You could set up debates on the environment or other issues that your students find relevant. Here's an example on how to end world hunger. Each students could have their own topic to brainstorm the elements and causes of the problem, then students could exchange links and try to offer solutions to each other's problems.
• You could use Solver to get anonymous feedback from your action research tasks. This would also enable you to enter into debate with the students and get a deeper level of understanding of their responses.
• You could use it to address classroom issues or learning issues and explain some of the rationale behind activities. This would enable students to safely and anonymously discuss the issues with you. Here's an example We don't like reading in class
• You could use it to brainstorm vocabulary around a topic or theme and then get your students to add definitions, and other elements of information about the words, like their parts of speech, collocations, example sentences etc. Here's an example on politics. Feel free to add to it.
• We can get students to share their strategies for learning English. Example: How can we improve our English?
• You could use Solvr to plan an events like a class outing, party or doing a play. This way you can get students to think about the different jobs involved and decisions to be made, decide who will do them and explore the potential obstacles.

What's so good about it?

• It's free. very quick and really simple to use.
• It encourages critical thinking skills and the breaking down of problems into manageable elements.
• It encourages debate and interactive discussion.
• It's very versatile.
• Great for interactive homework tasks
  
• It can be used synchronously or asynchronously.
• It can give students time to think about and review what they write.
• Students can see the ebb and flow of ideas and opinions and the way they interact.
• Solvr also seems to work in Second Life. Check out Peter Miller's posting: Problem Solvr
  
• It's anonymous so students can be honest without being identified.

What I'm not so sure about

• It's anonymous, so can be open to abuse.
• It shouldn't be used to replace face to face debate in class, where that is possible, but could be useful to prime students before class so they have more ideas when they come to class for discussion.
• Carries some advertising, but students can be asked to ignore the ads.
• It's still being tested, so you debates could disappear or there could be bugs.

I think Solvr is a really useful addition to any teacher's technological tool set, especially if you are involved in any kind of distance learning courses. I hope your students enjoy it and that you think of other useful ways to use it.

Related links:

• Create your own social network 7 steps
  
• How to create a wiki
• Using wikis with EFL students
• Using wikis for teacher development
• Online Video: As Communication
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL

Best

Nik Peachey

Tackling political issues

Big Think is running some really nice clips from two speakers on a range of political issues at the moment. Here's a nice taster to view with an opinion on "Is it fair to ask developing countries to go green?"



The speakers are:

• Lawrence Tribe, an American constitutional scholar and University Professor at the Harvard Law School.
• He talks about such things as globalization of the law and who is responsible for fixing the environment
• Parag Khanna, Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation
• He talks about whether there is a clash of civilisations and whether the US should talk to Syria
  

The videos are all quite short snippets even though the language level is quite high, and if you get your students to register and log in, they can then vote on whether they agree with the speaker or not.

These videos could provide a good route into what can be a difficult and controversial topic to deal with in the classroom.

I think we should be dealing with these kinds of topics, but personally I feel as a teacher it's our role to help students articulate and understand each others' opinions. I generally try to avoid adding my own.

You could also have a look at my previous posting for more ideas on how to use Big Think

• Video debating website

Hope these are useful

Best

Nik

Video debating website

I’ve been having a look at a new website (still in beta) which I think has some great educational / language learning potential. It's called BigThink.com

The site is designed to create debate and get people thinking about some of the big issues in life. It contains video clips from a very large and broad range of experts giving their opinions on various issues. users then have the opportunity to vote on whether they agree, respond to the questions raised or rate the speaker.

The site also provides people with there opportunity to upload their own questions or statements via video, audio, slideshows or text.

• You can browse the different topics in the ‘Ideas’ section http://www.bigthink.com/ideas/
• You can also see which of the various experts have contributed an opinion and browse them http://www.bigthink.com/experts/ . The range of experts is really very impressive and these include Ted Kennedy, Richard Branson, Jimmy Wales ( founder of Wikipedia) among a great many other.
• There are a really nice choice of questions set up that the experts are giving their opinions on.
  

These are some really good examples

• If you had $100 Billion to give away, how would you spend it? http://www.bigthink.com/features/91

• Where do human rights come from?
  http://www.bigthink.com/truth-justice/1941

• Is globalisation killing local culture?
  http://www.bigthink.com/features/150

• Can technology make us happy?
  http://www.bigthink.com/science-technology/517

I set up a free profile and even added my own question, only to find (rather embarrassingly that I couldn’t delete it, so here it is, direct from my office in Second Life.

• The future of education?
  http://www.bigthink.com/policy-politics/education/3227
  

Here’s a tutorial created by the site owners that I have embed into this page. It tells you a little about how to use the site.
How to use big think: http://www.bigthink.com/features/101



At the time I started to write this there were 2897 ‘ideas’ added to the site so there’s plenty there for students to look at.

If you decide to post your own idea, you can do this in either the form of a statement or a question (statements give users a chance to vote - agree - disagree and add a comment, questions allow users to respond)

How to use this with students:
Here are some suggestion for how you could use this site with your students. Be aware though that this is authentic material and the language level in some of the expert videos is quite high.

• Discuss some of the questions or statement in class then check with the expert on the site

• Get the experts opinion then discuss in class and see whether your students agree
• Get your students to prepare their own opinions and video them for their own class Big Think (could add it to the site or just use Big Think as a model for a classroom activity)
• Get students to watch some of the videos and rate for how interesting they are
• Ask students to find the expert they most agree with
• Ask students to find one that they disagree with and prepare a response (then respond on the site or in class)
• Ask students to summarise an opinion they have viewed
• Ask students to view an opinion and then defend that opinion in a class debate (even if they don’t agree with it)
• As the teacher you could set up some questions that you would like your students to respond to, or you could get your students to set up questions that they would like you or their fellow student to respond to
• Get students to create a big think question to add to the site. (Review later and see if there are any answers to your question)

What I liked about it
There's certainly plenty to like about this site even though it's still in beta at time of writing

• It’s free
• These are real experts many of them well known which should be pretty motivating for students
• The site is well designed and has a pretty clear and easy to use interface. Creating and adding your own question or statement is pretty quick and easy once you’ve created your profile (just three steps)
• You can choose your form of media, so even if your students don’t have any kind of digital recording equipment, they can still contribute to the site using text.
• If you click on the small email envelope icon on the video player you can send a link, get code to embed in a webpage (look at this earlier tutorial to see how this is done), or add it to your Delicious, Facebook or Digg accounts.

What I wasn’t so keen on

• It takes a while to get registered. The process itself is quite quick, but you need to click a confirmation link which is sent to your email address and this took a good hour to arrive, so it’s best to get yourself and / or your students registered well in advance.
• I’m not sure whether there is any editing or censorship before comments and opinions go live. The potential for abuse and misuse is huge. The site is very serious and if user don’t take the site seriously it could easily be swamped by rather uninteresting and poorly thought out opinions. With most Web 2.0 sites the vast majority of what is on them is rubbish, but the remaining 5% is pure gold.
• I also noticed with my own question, that once you add one you can’t get rid of it or edit it (which I would now like to be able to do). Adding this feature might help to ensure higher quality through self censorship.

Despite these slight drawbacks I think this is definitely a useful site and it has loads of potential. Do drop me a line if you use it with your class.

best

Nik