Collect Ideas and Vote- Tricider

Are you looking for a way to collect ideas and get feedbacks immediately? Tricider is a web tool easy to handle,  to ask opinions or feelings from students, and keep a record of all the brilliant ideas!

What Can Tricider do?

Tricider is a free space for anyone to use, like an online meeting room. It is simple and takes only a  few steps to set up your question page, and everyone goes to this page can leave their comments.

Start by entering your question, and maybe leave your opinion first to attract more!

However, there is something more about Tricider! After someone gave their opinion, people can comment their opinion as well! The layout of Tricider allows its readers to follow ideas and the comments on the ideas clearly and easily. Like the picture shown below, there are three columns in the chart. "Ideas" is the opinions you reply the question at the top of the page; "Pros and cons" is for people who've read your opinion to reply. The blue "+" means someone agrees with you or likes your ideas. In contrast, the orange "-" means somebody has some opinions opposite to you.

The column on the right, "Vote", provide people with an option to vote ideas they like. The one has the most votes will be shown at the top of the chart, displayed with a star, and the number means the total votes it got. And You may have noticed that there is a name or names under each comments or votes, and you might have also figured it out that they're the names of the people who left the messages and voted!


powered by tricider

You can also embed the discussion in your facebook or blog. It will still work even after the deadline for using the page is due, just like the picture above. To embed it, drag your page to the bottom, and you'll see more options:

Choose "Embed", and you'll see two options. If you want to show the whole discussion in your blog, then choose the left one.

Then you'll have the HTML-Code, and see the preview appearing on the page.

How Can Tricider Help Language Learning? 

Well, like other Web tool I've introduced, for example, TodaysMeet, Tricider offers a chatroom-like environment where shy students might be more willing to "speak out" their thoughts. From my own classroom observation, Asian students are usually shier than their western peers when being asked to talk about their ideas or feelings in a mix-nataionality class so sometimes the opportunities for them to use the target language in class are much fewer than other classmates. Tricider might be a space where shy students feel safe to express themselves and the teacher can thus encourage them to say more by giving positive feedbacks. After the teacher got enough comments or when s/he saw something interesting, the "talk" can hereby change to real oral discussion. Creating opportunities to practice four skills is always the primary concern in a language class, and with a proper tool like Tricider, it can aid both teachers and students in the process of teaching and learning.

What I Will Do With Tricider?

I believe the concept of Tricider is very obvious, collecting ideas, voting best ones, creating spaces for group discussion and etc. So, I am not going to say anything more about these advantages that have been known. I'd like to share the experience that in one of the sessions of the literature class I attended, the whole class was talking about the English translation of an old Chinese poem enthusiastically because we are debating both the meaning of the Chinese poem and the accuracy of its English translation. Everyone had different interpretations about the original poem and different taste about the translation; however, it's a pity that we didn't record it or write down other's explanation because there were some romantic interpretation and brilliant translations that provoked more inspiring thoughts. I believe, the neat and clear layout of Tricider could turn our discussion into a "memorable documentary".  The debate goes into the column of pros and cons, everyone chooses their favorite interpretation or translation, and the discussion saved is the best material for reflection writing. It is a process that involved a lot of communication, explanation and negotiation, and the ideas exchanged as well as the language used during the class were the best evidence that this is a way encourage both the use of target language and student's self-expression. 

Tricider Is Good, But...

Actually, I think Tricider works perfectly for gather information and ideas, because it even allow you to upload pictures to color your post or make the idea more vivid. So, the only thing I wish it can be improved  might be adding the function to reply the arguments stated in pros and cons because I believe the writer proposing that idea would usually want to clarify or defend their opinions.