Thursday, September 4, 2014

Day 11- Lino Brainstorm

For novice writers, looking at a blank white computer screen can be daunting. I want students to brainstorm ideas in a way that is flexible, easy, and colorful. That's why I have students use Lino (linoit.com) to brainstorm. Lino is an online corkboard application that hosts student-created sticky notes on a canvas. Stickies can be moves, organized, color-coded, and copied to other canvases, and students can work on Lino canvases in groups.

For our introductory Lino activity, I had students alternate brainstorming ideas to write about and sharing with their groups for 5 3-minute segments. This gave everyone an opportunity to gather possible writing ideas, post them to their Lino canvas, and hear the ideas of others in their group. Posting then sharing encourages students to listen to each other, share their ideas with their writing group(which can be hard for some students), and inspire each other with new thoughts.

I start be modeling how to sign up for Lino and create a new canvas. Then I show students how to brainstorm with Lino, posting new ideas different stickies and letting them pile up before spreading them out to cover the canvas. After alternating brainstorming and sharing, students begin to organize their ideas.

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