Tricider - making discussion HEATER

Introduction

 (Join the discussion, adding new ideas, arguments and vote)

    You may still remember we have introduced one tool called TodaysMeet on 17th of January, which can be easily used for back channeling discussion, brainstorming activities mainly carried out in class, and I also mentioned the two affordances that such collaboration tools have, being accessibility and reflection. Talking about reflection, being that online discussions can last much longer and people can always review and add new ideas on it, Tricider here is better because it provides a better-looking discussion environment with functions more than just adding your ideas, more useful functions such as agreeing or disagreeing with someone's ideas, adding arguments behind others points and voting. 

These functions are vital for discussions, because they not only make all points of view and pros and cons easier and clearer to look at, they provide language learners with a feeling of debate, which cannot be felt on TodaysMeet where learners just brainstorm ideas. With such feeling of heated discussion, learners will surely feel engaged in order to find ways of expression to support their own argument.

Ideas and Implementations

1. The teacher can write a question which relates to the topic that is going to talk about in class, generate a link and share it with students in advance (similar procedure to TodaysMeet), have them carry out a discussion. Then the teacher can prepare the class making reference to students' discussion, make comments on it in class. This can also motivate students in class if they know you are going to make comments because they care about your opinion on their arguments.

2. The discussion can also be carried out after the lesson, which is functioned as a review of what has been learned and strengthen their memory.

Both ideas making students practice 'spoken-like written' text can also help them prepare for their spoken English in real context.

Tricider: http://www.tricider.com

Tricider tutorial video: http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/sharing-discussing/tricider.html