Create a virtual shelf to show off your books, see what your friends are reading and discover new books - all for free!

review needed

xtimeline is a free web-based timeline. Easily create and share timelines with pictures and videos. Search facility to find what others have published already and use that with your students or they can use it in their own research

review needed

YouTube by teachers. That means it's a lot safer a place to visit and an awful lot easier to find some video to use to help get across an idea or help students research.

What fun! You and your students may be distracted by the thousands of other polls available on this bright and cheerful site but, before you do, check out the opportunities to add videos, voice snippets, images etc to your poll and to see who voted for what. OK so this won't suit everybody but it'll make some of you smile.

review needed

http://www.pollsb.com

Browse and use millions of flashcards created by other students and teachers, or create your own.

Generally regarded as the leading bookmarking tool, del.icio.us has maintained its clean and efficient interface, providing both access to all your bookmarks and to others that people have tagged similarly. It's taking a while but tagging is becoming a key to finding our way around the web world, e-portfolios and information management. Del.icio.us clouds can be very effective classroom tools too.

http://del.icio.us

Useful survey tool that you'll see being used by several agencies nowadays. Why send ill-designed paper surveys out when you can do it on-line and get the results nicely collated and displayed for you?

http://surveymonkey.com

Include your own questions and a list of responses in a web page, blog or VLE page. Great little tool, smart design - and a long-awaited use of Web2.0 technology.

http://polldaddy.com

If all you want to do is get some feedback or set some questions in a hurry then you'll find this tool can help you do that in minutes. There's also pollit.com but the results page has annoying ads.

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/

Not your normal poll - people can vote on your ideas or suggest answers by SMS or via the web and they can also post messages to a message board that will display live on your screen. You really need to try this to appreciate it!

review needed

A fresh and fascinating new search tool that uses clouds of associated words with updated links as you move to focus in on what you are looking for. Very smart interface and a recently launched kids' version too which is fun.

http://quintura.com

Live is the new Microsoft initiative for online services, and this site gives you the ability to locate local services using sophisticated mapping to show the results.

http://local.live.com/

Google Maps is a very similar system in every respect, and its mapping is very responsive to zooming and panning. There are, of course, also the marvellous Google Earth and fun Google Moon too!

http://maps.google.com/

The Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Hmm. What's this doing here? Bit controversial but I reckon it's worth thinking about. Participants can place Portals on a site and then invite people to take a tour via their Lightposts of relevant sites, with a commentary. Ratings help you avoid rubbish. Students will think you've gone mad but it's not so much of a game or dsitarction as first appears.

http://pmog.com

Want to take notes about a particular Web page? MyStickes are like sticky notes for the Web. Once you've registered (free), you can add sticky notes wherever you like. When you come back to a page, the sticky will be there.

http://www.mystickies.com/

Excellent and beautifully designed tag / bookmarking tool which claims to tag the universe, amongst other things. Nice addition enables you to list all your blogs which is handy.

http://technorati.com/

Collect notes and ideas from web sites you are researching in one easily accessible place. A great tool for sharing your files with colleagues and students, keeping track of your work from home or in college. There’s also an optional Google Notebook extension for your browser to make adding content even easier.

http://www.google.com/notebook

If you'd like to limit your or your students' searches to a range of trusted or more pertinent web sites then this tool makes that quite easy. Whilst it'll be difficult to give up googling there may be times when the whole www is too vast - you may know the sites likely to have the information so just search them instead.

http://www.rollyo.com

Well, sometimes, you might want to try another traditional search engine. These two are well-respected and have some interesting variations on the 'search' theme which may appeal. You may even find they locate what you really want more effciciently than the usual MSN, yahoo! defaults or Google. Ask uses what used to be known as Teoma's ranking technology and Vivisimo is a 'cluster' search tool reporting from several types of search in one go.

http://search.ask.com

http://vivisimo.com

A lot of fun to be had here, while also learning about physics.

Review needed

Use this tool to 'write on' web sites, photos, brainstorm etc. It's called 'co-browsing' I believe. I think of it as drawing on screen with others but you'll get the point.

Review needed

This tool can collect a series of web sites and present them in a sequence with your text commentary. It's similar to the Nethernet game but not called a game. Quite useful if you want to show just a range of sites with your comments on each. I suppose I could have used it for this but I didn't.

Review needed

You've seen those clouds of words - now you can create your own from any site or document. Very easy to use and nice results which effectively show the importance pf various terms. Recently used to show how often UK Chancellor of Exchequer used the word Financial in national news.

Review needed

Another collection of words represented in an appealing way. This isn't so much a cloud but more of a collage. Very effective - you have to use it to appreciate how good it is. Seems popular in schools I've visted with great-looking work by pupils on display utilising this tool.

Who said the sky's the limit? take your students on a trip to the stars and get the facts on what's out there, near and far, in this beautifully presented tool, now bearing a BBC brand.

http://www.open2.net/science/
finalfrontier/planisphere/frames.html

Another universe exploration tool which is actually being used in some of the centres where you lie back in a chair and get taken on a trip through galaxies.

http://www.stellarium.org/