Dotstorming is a collaborative brainstorming tool that I’ve used and written about for half of a decade or more. One of its key features is the option to have participants in a brainstorming session vote for their favorite ideas submitted during the session. (An idea that Brainstormer which I reviewed yesterday has now implemented). 

Back in January Dotstorming launched an updated user interface while retaining all of the core functions of the service. This week Dotstorming added some new functionality. 

You can now upload videos and PDFs to Dotstorming brainstorming boards. Previously you could link to those items but now you can actually upload them to the notes on your boards. This means that participants in your brainstorming sessions can view the videos and PDFs without having to open a new browser tab or window. 

Applications for Education
The value of Dotstorming in an online or in-person classroom is that it allows you to gather ideas or answers to a problem from your students and then have your students vote for the favorite idea or answer. Those vote totals can then be the basis for discussions with the whole class or in small groups.

Dotstorming still provides teachers with tools to disable chat and or voting. It’s possible to disable chat while still having the voting function turned on. 

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that frequently steal my work include CloudComputin, WayBetterSite, and TeachersFly.