AnswerGarden

Have you ever wondered what your students are thinking about a certain subject you are teaching? Or have you ever wanted your students opinions about a question you have? AnswerGarden  is a great website that provides a fun and easy way to get short feedback from students in an organized way. This site is especially neat because you can use it as a brainstorming tool for students and you can link to any other website- like a blog or class website. You could use this site to make a page to gather feedback and answers for a plethora of subjects and questions. For example, I made an AnswerGarden to collect student opinions on what we should name our class pet. When I set this page up (for free), I did not even have to register for the site. You  can just click on the 'create an AnswerGarden' link at the top of the website and it guides you through the process of creating an AnswerGarden. You can set the topic or question to be whatever you want it to be and then publish it so that your students can go in and write a short response. It is also nice that the website limits the number of characters per response so it forces students to be precise in their answers. Another cool feature of this website is that you can embed it to another site very easily. This way you can easily share your AnswerGarden with your students and guide them to the site easily. I could see myself using this site in the classroom to either start classroom discussions, get anonymous feedback, for homework purposes, or to merely engage students in a new way in class. I found the site very easy to use and mostly self-explanatory. I hope you find it useful and fun, as I know I did! :) Enjoy!