NSTEP Study Buddy is a student-to-student math tutoring service that is freely available to students who have been been qualified through their school or after school program to receive the tutoring services, or who qualify under the national school lunch program or whose households receive food stamps. This is a tremendous example of community service that benefits many. The disadvantaged getting the opportunity and support to realize, or even surpass their potential, and the volunteer tutors get the reward of contributing to the success of their fellow world citizen.

Zoomerang is an online polling & surveying site. The basic, aka free, account allows you to create an unlimited number of surveys & polls, each having up to 12 questions, and 100 responses. Results can be viewed in real-time. This is ideal for surveying small population like a class or grade level in a school, or even as a virtual testing/quizzing tool!

Mixbook is a free service that allows users to create online photo books, cards and calendars. It comes with a set of design templates, but the user can create their own using the available design tools. Users can invite others to collaborate on the production of these online projects. Mixbook is mashed-up with sites like Facebook, Flickr and Picasa, so users can easily user their photos from these sites too. There's also a Mixbook Education program where students and teachers have free access to collaborative classroom tools, in a secure online environment and receive discounts on printed products.

ScribLink is a free online, Java based whiteboard tool that users can share in real-time. When you go to the site, a whiteboard is automatically loaded for you to use, so there's not even a need to register. The user invites others to collaborate on the whiteboard, and it's even possible to save print or even email the work. The tool also has a built in chat too, and voice over IP conferencing - so talk for free as long as you want!!! ScribLink also allow users to transfer files to each other, and now there's even an iPhone group messaging app.

It's YoutTube for Teachers!!! TeacherTube is a service that allows users, mostly educators to share educational resources (documents, images, audio & video files) for free. The sites has resources for classroom use, professional development, and even have some posted by students.

GoSkyWatch is an app for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad that allows the user to display a map of the sky at anytime, and with any orientation. The app includes hundreds of images of planets & deep sky objects, constellation, DSO ephemeris data, 180 degree display of the sky, and if you point the back of the device to the ground, you'll get a map of the sky on the other side of the globe at that time.

Open source productivity suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, databases and graphics, very much like Microsoft's Office. One of the best features about OpenOffice, when compared to Microsoft Office is OpenOffice applications can usually open many more file formats without the need for special add-ons.

Mind42 is a free browser-based collaborative mind mapping service. The tool has a very clean and intuitive user interface, and allows collaborators to add include images, change font attributes, and does not limit the number of maps or collaborators. It also uses Google groups to host a forum for networking, and has the ability to restore previous

"NoteMesh is like Wikipedia for your [class] notes". This service makes it possible for students in the same class (created in NoteMesh) to aggregate their notes. If users want to start a class, they just complete a form and NoteMesh creates a wiki page for the class. students who add the class to their roster could post notes to the wiki. Ultimately, you "collaborate to graduate".

Technorati, a mashup of th words technology and literati, is a search engine designed specifically for searing blogs. Basically, it tracks and links to the top blogs, posts, and tags. The site also has many channels which feature columns that cover specific niches of the blogosphere and news. The service uses and contributes to open source software.

Second Life is a 3D MUVE, or multi-user vitural environment, that offers a third-person graphics platform where many users can interact simultaneous, and have a presence in a persistent virtual world.