What it is: I learned about Answer Garden from an interactive post on Suzanne Whitlow’s excellent blog, Suzanne’s Blog. Answer Garden is a “new minimalistic feedback tool.” It can be used as an online answer collection tool or embedded on a website or blog. An Answer Garden is created as easily as entering a question and clicking create, no registration needed. Embed the Answer Garden on any blog, website, or social network page using the embed code provided. You can also give students a direct link to the Answer Garden. Students can post answers to your questions by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers. All of the answers are represented in the form of a word cloud. 25 answers are visible per garden but as students submit the same answer, that word will grow bigger. Creating an Answer Garden is SO simple. Just type in your question or brainstorm statement and click create.
How to integrate Answer Garden into the classroom: Answer Garden is a fun way for students to brainstorm, plan, and work together. Pose open-ended thinking questions on your classroom blog or website for students to answers. Use Answer Garden to host a classroom poll. Create a geography Answer Garden that gives students a place that they can describe a state or country they are learning about. Use Answer Garden during reading as a place for students to reflect on different characters, plots, settings, and themes. In history, give students a date range, event, or historical figure and let them add words to the Answer Garden that describe. In the primary classroom, type in a phoneme combination and have students submit words that fit the phoneme rule. Create an answer garden to recognize VIP students in your classroom where each child can answer with a character quality that they appreciate about that student. The possibilities are endless! This tool is SO easy to use, try it out in the Answer Garden below.
Where will use Answer Garden?… at AnswerGarden.ch.
Tips: The default settings on Answer Garden only allows students to submit one answer. You can check the optional “Unlimited Answering” to give students multiple opportunities to submit answers.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Answer Garden in your classroom.
WOW there are a lot of uses for this embed-able tool… WAY beyond just the class room… However this would be an awesome way to encourage feedback in real time. I hope college professors grab on to this concept… it could add a lot of value.
Immediate feedback is vital for learning, so this is a terrific tool.
Yes, lots of applications beyond the classroom but I love the collaboration it provides for the classroom!
Anyone have success embedding their AnswerGarden into a WordPress blog?
Hi Deb, this is a WordPress blog and I had no trouble embedding the Answer Garden above. Anyone else struggling with a WordPress embed?
Only issue with classroom use is if someone writes something inappropriate- it’s there for everyone to see until you’ve realised and deleted it.
Yes Jacqui, this is an issue when introducing any web 2.0 tool. Another reason it is SO important to teach proper use!