|
Answer Garden
Everyone who reads "tuesdays" loves to share and encourage others to share. It's very impressive to me how the teaching profession has evolved since I began decades ago. I was given a key, a pat on the back and a spot of luck to "do a good job!" I rarely had visitors and was trusted to take great care of the children. I lived in quite an isolationist bubble with very little adult conversation and really no opportunity to share. Today, it's incredible. We have access to each other like no other time in history and teachers are collaborating, sharing, giving and encouraging each other. It's exciting. This "tuesdays" is a look at one of many collaborative sites that I hope encourages you to share with others.
|
|
Answer Garden is a word cloud tool that one of my favorite professional development specialist ever showed us recently. At first, I didn't appreciate its depth so don't be surprised that on the surface it looks quite drab. Why wouldn't you just use Wordle or Taxedo? The key piece is the collaboration. Answer Garden is FREE which touts itself as a "minimal tool for maximum feedback." It's a digital scribble place that can be embedded in your website or blog for feedback instead of comments. It's brilliance lies in it's Twitter-like confinement to a limited number of characters. Answer Garden's is only 20 characters.
|
|
If you like to brainstorm and share with others, I would like to encourage you to share this great resource. Answer Garden is for anyone interested in using an easy and powerful way to get feedback from a group. Answer Garden is used by teachers to establish the knowledge level of a class on any give topic. It is used at conferences and workshops to break the ice with the audience in a fun and interactive fashion. Answer Garden is used by creative teams for digital brainstorming sessions. If you use it, be sure to create a password so that you can control the content. You can limit answers to only one per computer and even lock it so random answers cannot be added later. If you want the results to be pretty, then you can export them into Wordle or Taxedo. It's a great simple tool for great results. Keep It Simple Sweety!
|
How do you use Answer Garden? Answer Garden has a sweet Quick Start Guide. It was created by teachers so they fully understand all the things that could go wrong in the classroom and develop it from the need for simple sharing and gathering of information. You create an Answer Garden by entering a topic on the Create New AnswerGarden-page. Then you'll be redirected to your newly created Answer Garden. Since no one has posted an answer yet, your Answer Garden will still be empty. The next step is to share your Answer Garden. Use it live in the classroom, at a meeting or a conference. Or place (embed) your Answer Garden on your blog, site or social network page, using the provided embed code. Or post a direct link to your Answer Garden in email it to friends. As your Answer Garden draws attention people will start posting their answers to your question, either by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers. These are then represented in your Answer Garden in the form of a growing word cloud. Thanks so much Jenn for sharing this new tool with all of us
|
| What is "tuesdays with Karen"?
|
"tuesdays with Karen" is a weekly newsletter/blog designed to encourage, equip and empower teachers to be creative with educational technology. Please add your technology comments to my "tuesdays with Karen" blog. |
