Cool Web 2.0 tools for teachers

Found this prezi self guided presentation with video clips or pictures of cool sites to create cartoon clips, short films, talking pictures, etc. I'm going to try some out now!

Cool Fun Web 2.0 Stuff on Prezi

Jing - Screen capture tool

This may be of interest to some of you?  A screen capture tool that allows you to capture pictures or create video clips of activity on your own computer screen. I use Adobe Captivate - you may recall seeing some clips in the online DAC materials but this is another free tool.

An A-Z of Web 2.0 tools

In case you needed to spend more hours checking out different tools...:-)

A-Z of web 2.0 tools on Box of Tricks

Tools, tools, tools

I sometimes wonder if my old habits die so hard that I am reluctant to explore new communications tools. There is a sense that each new blog that comes out or each chat tool is just more of the same but then each does have specific characteristics that might make them more or less usable and these attributes might be important when making decisions about integration.

Nik Peachey on his excellent blog for language teachers http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ linked to this list of blogging tools by Jane Hart for example http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/blogging.html Here the basic criteria revolve around cost and download flexibility, but there must be more to it when thinking about learning attributes? Some on this list look intriguing though and I wonder if any of you have experience of any of them (there are other types of tool too if you browse the links).

More interestingly, what tools do you use for regular communications and/or use with learners and why do you go for these given the choice we have? Is it possible to draw up a list of attributes that inform those choices? What distinguishes one synchronous text based chat tool from another? Or WebCT forum from Moodle forum tool:-) Do specific attributes make significant differences to interactions?