Site of the Week

Every week I would like to spotlight a site that I have used in my classroom. 

The first one is Answer Garden (http://answergarden.ch/).  It is a quick feedback tool that does not require a login and has a lot of features. 

Basics: You ask a question. Students answer the question in less than 20 characters. Answers are turned into a word cloud.

Below is an example of an answer garden:


What are the best technology tools for the classroom?... at AnswerGarden.ch.

After you have created your Answer Garden they have a connection to turn it into a Wordle or Taxedo with only 2 clicks of the mouse.



Test Kitchen: I used this last week to brainstorm for fables that we were writing.  Students had to think of an animal and one of their personality characterisitcs like, "dog playful" or "cat curious".  The bad part was that I didn't check if the site was available for students with their logins.  It wasn't.  I had to turn to plan B which was to have the students dictate and I wrote them in.  I learned my lesson to check the site on student computers before trying to use it.  The kids loved it and it was easy to embed.  It really seemed to help them exand their answers and get beyond basic animals.

Possible Applications:

Science-Have them make a list of all the parts of a cell that they can remember or kinds of rocks or any other set of vocabulary words.

Social Studies-Ask a question that makes students take a stance on a topic like-Who was the most powerful leader of the 20th century?

Math-Give a set of parameters for a number and have students list all the numbers that fit the parameters like it is an even number, divisible by three, and it's absolute value is greater than negative 50.

Language Arts-Brainstorm topics for an essay.

Screentoaster: (short video tutorial to be posted at a later time)