A First Look at Tricider and Stormboard

 In today’s educational landscape, digital technology has become an integral part of teaching, and among the myriad of online collaborative tools available, I have begun to explore Tricider and Stormboard. I aim to examine the pros and cons of these two tools and explore their potential applications in English teaching.

This post is organized into three parts:

• An Analysis of Tricider
• An Analysis of Stormboard
• My Personal Experiences and Reflections.

An Analysis of Tricider

Tricider is an online tool primarily designed for brainstorming and decision-making discussions. Its interface is clear and straightforward, and you can quickly log in using your Google account, making it easy for even first-time users to master its functionality. 

In Tricider, once a teacher or facilitator poses a question or topic, participants can submit their own viewpoints and list reasons both in favor and against. Users can then vote to prioritize the different options, helping the team sift through numerous ideas to select the best solution. Overall, its operation is simple and primarily based on text input, making it ideal for quickly gathering a wide range of ideas.

Just enter a question on the main page and Tricider will automatically create the relevant page. No further settings are required. Tricider will keep the question for 13 days, and the retention date can be changed freely. Click "Add idea" on the left to add your own opinions and ideas, and you can add additional explanations and pictures.

Other members can use Tricider to anonymously refute or agree with existing opinions and give their own reasons by using "Pros and cons".

The ideas with the highest number of votes will be marked with a gold star and highlighted in a more prominent way.

Tricider’s interface is intuitive and easy to get started with, making it very suitable for teachers and students who seek classroom efficiency or do not want to spend too much time learning new tools. This website helps teachers and students focus on the discussion and decision-making process, quickly gathering and evaluating opinions from all sides. Moreover, most functions are free, requiring no complex setup, so it can be quickly put to use in the classroom.

However, because the website itself is simple in functionality, it only supports text input and voting and lacking more diverse display methods—it is somewhat inadequate for complex teaching environments. Additionally, the website’s functions are rather fixed, making it impossible to freely design layouts and templates, and therefore it cannot fully meet the personalized needs of teaching.

 

A clear difference in the level of presentation of ideas!

The final drawback, which I experienced most deeply during our collaboration, is that when a topic requires multi-level, branched thinking, Tricider’s structure becomes very one-dimensional and difficult to organize, failing to present complex logical relationships. Our group found that while Tricider is very suitable for brainstorming sessions, if one needs to logically collect scattered ideas and build a framework, Tricider becomes almost useless; other tools are needed to proceed in an organized manner.

📚Application Possibilities

In the English classroom, Tricider can also be applied in many teaching scenarios. First, Tricider’s discussion function and its “Pros and cons” feature for specific viewpoints can help cultivate students’ debating and critical thinking skills. After reading a controversial argumentative essay, a teacher can invite students to use Tricider to analyze the article’s viewpoints, listing reasons for and against. This not only helps students understand the text more deeply but also cultivates their critical thinking. It is like setting up a debate arena where students can use the Tricider platform to express and fully defend their opinions, making the process of logical reasoning and critical thinking lively and enjoyable.

In addition to debates between viewpoints, Tricider can also be used to gather a variety of ideas and creative concepts. Suppose a teacher is organizing a class activity for an English performance; students can freely express their opinions on the platform, comment on each other’s ideas, and use the voting function to choose the most creative and realistic proposal. This not only fully involves students in the decision-making of the class activity but also stimulates their innovative thinking, allowing everyone to experience the joy of collaboration in discussion.

Finally, Tricider can be used for class-wide or small group voting decisions. Whether it is determining the theme of an activity or assigning tasks and details, this tool can efficiently collect opinions from all parties, making the decision-making process both open, transparent, and full of participation.

An Analysis of Stormboard

If Tricider is like a simple glass of lemonade, then Stormboard is like a carefully mixed, colorful cocktail. Stormboard is an online collaborative whiteboard tool whose core feature lies in its multimedia support and flexible sticky note operations. You can add text, images, videos, and even external links on the same digital canvas, and students can freely express themselves here, as if writing their imagination on a whiteboard with infinite possibilities.

In the Template Gallery, we can find templates for a variety of application scenarios. The teacher first sets the discussion topic or project task, and then, according to the needs of the activity, chooses or creates a dedicated digital whiteboard. Students can add sticky notes on the whiteboard, with each sticky note allowing them to write down their ideas, supporting text, images, and even videos.

Stormboard is a powerful online collaborative tool whose multimedia integration advantages make abstract discussions vivid and intuitive. For example, in an English class for creative writing, the teacher can create a whiteboard on Stormboard, allowing students to display their story ideas by uploading images, inserting videos, and adding text sticky notes. This operation is like piecing together fragments of the students’ creativity into a complete picture, with each sticky note acting like a bright splash of color in the painting. 

The built-in real-time collaboration feature enables every student to participate in the discussion simultaneously on the same platform; by using drag-and-drop operations, they can easily organize and classify their ideas, while auxiliary tools such as voting and timers effectively manage the pace of discussion and decision-making, making the classroom discussion both orderly and lively. For instance, in one group project, students used Stormboard to jointly conceptualize and present their English play, which not only greatly stimulated creative inspiration but also allowed each viewpoint to be fully displayed and evaluated.

However, Stormboard has a certain learning curve and limitations. Due to its support for multiple modes of operation and rich multimedia features, new users often need some time to familiarize themselves with the interface and various tools. In a group collaborative activity in class, we encountered such difficulties: because we were unfamiliar with how to use Stormboard, we did not know how to arrange and combine ideas or how to communicate information, and ended up turning the multifunctional whiteboard into a difficult-to-use chat area. This undoubtedly reminds us that proper training and prior familiarization are indispensable.

The left side shows the monthly price, the right side shows the annual price

Furthermore, although the basic functions can be used for free, if you want to experience all the advanced features, you need to subscribe to a paid version, which can be a significant burden for schools or individuals with limited budgets. In addition, since Stormboard emphasizes real-time collaboration and is highly dependent on the network environment, the tool’s smoothness and interactive effect will be affected when the network is unstable.

📚Application Possibilities

In the English classroom, I believe teachers can consider the application of Stormboard from the following perspectives. 

The first idea that came to my mind is that during group discussions, Stormboard can serve as a "virtual discussion room," where students can be divided into groups to organize their thoughts and assign tasks on their respective whiteboards. The teacher can monitor and provide feedback in real time. However, this is somewhat unsuitable for classes with too many students, as it can easily lead to chaos; but if the teacher’s supervision is adequate, Stormboard can be an effective tool in this process.

Secondly, in the process of teaching vocabulary and grammar, Stormboard’s multimedia features can help teachers start instruction in a multimodal way. For example, when explaining complex grammatical structures, the teacher can add example sentences, relevant images, or short videos on the whiteboard to help students intuitively understand the grammatical phenomena. Similarly, during vocabulary expansion exercises, students can write associated words on sticky notes and then illustrate them with images, making the process both vivid and creative, and significantly enhancing memory retention.

Like the picture shown above, I have tried to create a vocabulary learning whiteboard with multiple areas. The effect is amazing.

Finally, after the class is over, teachers can use Stormboard to allow students to collaboratively summarize the key points of the lesson. Each student can record their understanding of the knowledge points on a sticky note, and then the entire class can discuss and summarize together. The resulting knowledge blueprint not only facilitates review but also becomes valuable material for future teaching reflections.

My Personal Experiences and Reflections

In our group activities, we attempted to use Tricider and Stormboard for writing passages, but I believe the final results were unsatisfactory. 

First, although Tricider can conveniently and quickly collect opinions, for topics that require broad deliberation, Tricider is unable to construct hierarchical relationships between viewpoints and arguments, leading to confusion in thought. 

Therefore, I think that although Tricider is simple to use, it requires an appropriate application scenario. For example, for a debate topic, the teacher can list the viewpoints of the affirmative and negative sides in advance, so that students can use the "Pros and cons" feature to conduct a more structured discussion, making it clearer.

Becoming familiar with Stormboard requires a process. When our group members first tried to use Stormboard, we were all completely confused—we did not know which template to choose or how to adjust the sticky notes, let alone add more multimedia forms. In the end, we could only input dry text, and due to the lack of suitable templates, the entire process of thinking and writing was very chaotic. As we gradually mastered how to use Stormboard, the situation improved, but time was running short. 

Therefore, if Stormboard is to be used in the classroom, I would suggest that teachers have students familiarize themselves with how to operate this website on their own time first; this can greatly save classroom time, improve efficiency, and also boost students’ confidence while reducing anxiety.

In summary, Tricider is suitable for quickly collecting opinions, debating viewpoints, and making simple decisions. It is convenient for summarizing complex information and retaining only the most essential parts. If a teacher needs to quickly understand the basic views of the students, or if the goal is to teach students how to evaluate and filter opinions, the "Pros and cons" mechanism of Tricider can directly address the topic, making it undoubtedly the most suitable choice. 

On the other hand, Stormboard is suitable for scenarios that require multi-angle, multimedia displays and structured discussions. It can piece together different forms of information into a complete picture. If the classroom goal is to stimulate students' creativity and cultivate teamwork skills, then the multimedia interaction and real-time collaboration of Stormboard can undoubtedly bring a richer experience. For classes that require in-depth discussions, creative writing, and project management, Stormboard is even more powerful.

During the post-class analysis, I found a very useful Stormboard tutorial video, which I believe can help many people quickly become familiar with this tool:

The strengths and weaknesses of any tool are not absolute; the key lies in how well they align with classroom objectives. Just as we need to choose different seasonings for different dishes when cooking, Tricider and Stormboard each have their own merits, and how to combine their use needs to be flexibly adjusted by teachers according to the actual teaching situation.

The website address:

Tricider：https://www.tricider.com/

Stormboard：https://stormboard.com/