The Answer Garden is an intriguing combination of a survey tool and a word cloud generator.

Without requiring any registration, it lets you pose a question to which people can write their own short answers. The answers appear as a word cloud below the question, with the words changing in size based on how often they are used in responses. Responders have the option of writing in their own answer or clicking on one of the words already in the word cloud.

The entire “garden” can be embedded in a blog or website, and you can also link to it.

The fact that anybody can answer anything to the question without identifying themselves makes it problematic — to say the least — in many school settings. But in certain mature situations, it could be very useful.

Just because it’s such an original idea and easy to use, I’m adding it to:

The Best Sites For Creating Online Polls & Surveys

The Best Resources For Learning About “Word Clouds”

I learned about this tool through the free guide from Edutopia I posted about five minutes ago. It’s just one of many good tidbits inside it.