Teachers can use AnswerGarden to pique interest before beginning a unit -- and access prior knowledge -- by having students respond to a question, or they can use it as an exit ticket response at the end of a lesson for general assessment. Teachers can also use AnswerGarden for quick relationship-building questions that don't relate to any specific content. It can be used, too, in professional development (PD) or other speaking engagements for audience participation.
Continue readingAnswerGarden is a simple, quick tool to get feedback through word clouds. As submissions are received in real time, larger fonts indicate the most frequent responses. Everything a teacher needs to set up a session is on one page of the site. Teachers start by entering a question and then choosing from a few options (defaults are already selected, so customizing further is optional). The Brainstorming mode allows responders to enter as many answers as they'd like, including duplicates of the same answer, and the Classroom mode allows multiple responses per user but no duplicates. The Moderator mode allows teachers to review comments before they're published, but during this review, it didn't work (no notifications of answers to moderate were received).
Students will think critically before sharing their responses, and they'll also learn from reading others' ideas. The fun design and social aspect will engage students. There are numerous ways teachers can implement the tool easily, but even though it's pretty basic, it will require some critical thinking from teachers as well. How will you get the link to students? There's no way to share, so it will need to be cut and pasted to be shared through another channel. How will you monitor student responses? Other tools, like Mentimeter and Poll Everywhere offer more options and monitoring, but take a little more work to create. An AnswerGarden session can be created in less than a minute, just without many bells and whistles.