Answer Garden Review

While browsing Web 2.0 tools on Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers blog, I stumbled across Answer Garden. My first impression of it was that it looked simple, quick, and fun to do with my students. Answer Garden is basically an interactive web wall where multiple people can log in to it (without registering) as quickly as they can access the link, and answer/respond to your question/statement that you posted. The speed and simplicity of it is what makes me want to try it in the classroom. Plus, I really like that when the same response is submitted from multiple people, that response 'grows' in the answer garden window, which helps everyone instantly see what the most popular response is. In the classroom, this could be a great discussion starter, poll/survey, engagement tool, typing & communication exercise, formative assessment, and pre-test to see what students already know about something. The pictures here show how to start an Answer Garden.

For users who want to have more control of the Answer Garden, there are some options that can be selected, such as how many times a user may submit an answer, how long the Answer Garden is available for input, and how many characters someone's answer can be.