AnswerGarden 2

Thanks to all those who have responded to the AnswerGarden question I planted a few days ago. Here is what I have learned about AnswerGarden since.

As people come to your question and add new answers they appear in the display box. It is also possible for visitors to vote or agree with answers that are already there by clicking on them. When you click on an existing answer it appears in a text box and then you click "submit" to register your vote.

At anytime you can use your original link to go back to your question and see how many people have answered.

I'd also like to a couple of things you can do with the answers after you've collected them. The first thing you may notice is that some answers are bigger and bolder than the others. These are the ones with more than one vote. You can find out how many votes each has by hovering over text with your cursor.

The number of votes will appear.

Clicking the options button below the display box will expand your view and you'll be able see how many total answers you've received. Finally, you have the option of exporting your answers directly to Wordle or Tagxedo as I did to generate the image at the beginning of this post.

If you have an interactive whiteboard, your students could enter their answers right on the board while the whole group watches the work progress. Don't you think this would be an engaging way for young students to learn to gather and analyse data?

AnswerGarden

Please bear with me while I try out a newly discovered tool. Answer Garden looks like a quick and easy way to gather short comments from a group. After a couple of minutes of checking the particulars on the website, I created this AnswerGarden poll.

This time of year in northern North America most of us are desparately looking forward to spring. Today we in Minnesota are getting yet another round of snow and from here that snow is headed to Chicago and then off to the East where I can't imagine they have anymore room to put it than we do at this point. Therefore, as a coping mechanism, in my poll I am offering winter-stressed folks an opportunity be hopeful about spring, but even if you're in an area that is not buried under an icy blanket of white stuff right now, please help me out by submitting your words of encouragement.

I can see AnswerGarden being simple to use even with young students. There are no accounts. You get a link that you can hand out to your group and it goes right to your poll. No sign in or further navigation is required. Check it out. What do you think?