Tinkercad
Tinkercad is a free, kid-friendly, online 3D modeling program used in many STEM classrooms but can be used in any subject area. Students can use Tinkercad to design, modify, and print 3D objects. With Tinkercad, students can create 3D prototypes of their ideas, bringing the design thinking process to life.
Students can build a solution to an exact problem and later test out their designs as part of the Testing Stage of design thinking.
Explain Everything
Explain Everything is an online digital whiteboard. The tool is ideal for creating videos and screen recordings to explain a concept. The tool help students present their ideas and create a visual, whiteboard–style presentation to convey their ideas creatively.
Ideament
Ideament allows users to draw flow charts, mind maps, diagrams, graphs and convey information and ideas in a presentation style. The tool also provides a space to save all your text and pictures conveniently.
Tricider
Tricider is a social voting tool. But you can use the tool in education through its interactive polling feature. Apart from using Tricider to assess students’ prior knowledge, formative assessment, and a discussion starter, the tool allows user to add their ideas as a possible poll answer. The tool accepts images, texts, or links in poll answers. This feature makes the tool a fit for brainstorming.
SyncSpace
SyncSpace is a virtual, zoomable whiteboard that offers collaboration anytime, anywhere. Multiple collaborators can work simultaneously and sketch together with the ideas. The zooming option allows students to add little details when and where they need it. The zoom ability feature adds greater context to their sketches and notes. All SyncSpace files can be shared on social media and saved to the device’s photo library or emailed as PDFs.
SpiderScribe
SpiderScribe is an online brainstorming and mind-mapping tool. It allows students to organize their ideas mannerly. Students can easily connect notes, calendars, files, events, images, and more in map or chart forms. Every created content can be easily shared online, and all maps are stored in the Cloud so that students can access their work from anywhere. The tool offers the feature to collaborate with peers. Thus, it is ideal to use the tool for group projects as multiple users can work simultaneously.
Speare.com
Speare.com markets itself as a “thought processor.” The tool aims to make writing as easy and flexible as thinking. The tool turns your thoughts into building blocks that can be sorted, divided, ordered, and snapped back together as the user wishes. These building blocks further can be turned into paragraphs, documents or chapters as quickly as a finger swipe of a mouse click. The tool also offers a speech-to-text feature for times when you’re thinking out loud. The tool is a great way to brainstorm and put ideas in one place for later work.
Mindnode
Mindnode allows students to make mind maps of main ideas and add sub-categories and topics. The tool offers collaboration so users can quickly brainstorm with other group members. You can highlight ideas, define concepts, move thoughts, and visually represent what is in your brain.
Did we miss any? Make sure to mention it in the comment section.
