Which blog tool for 2006?

Which blog tool would you prefer for collaborative work with students in 2006?

This is an inquiry to find out how to make the most out of the coming EVO 2006 session on blogs. Anna Koorey is coordinating a proposal, Bob, Jane and I have accepted to teamwork on this while Bee and some other key persons have said that they would like to present when we get to the real thing.  And today, Anna and I have been brainstorming which aspects of blogging in education we would like to focus on. At http://elgg.net they have developed a tool for collaboration and portfolio building, it is still under  development and a major update is about to be released soon I think, hopefully with as more up to date rich text editor that does not require HTML skills. I do like their FAF feature, a cluster of friends of a firend that allows you to read  text and image blogs across participants in a group, or rather people whose interests are connected somehow. Still, it is a very small community with only few active blogs as far as I can find out. There is a file folder for each and perhaps also for groups – will need to dig deeper into this to find out pro & con. Design is not fancy, simplicity rules, but probably this would change whenever someone starts designing nicer skins for your choice.

Another possibility for the collaboration part of the session would be working with blogger , as in this group blog. I’m personally fond of their newest gadget which is a plugin for MS Word – I’m now typing and formatting from a Word document, using a Blogger menu bar with four buttons: Blogger settings, Open Post, Save as  draft and Publish. Very neat tool. And Blogger is so easy to explain to newbies  - they can start instantly working on postings and not worrying  about formatting as they have a nice interface with tools menu, links creator, etc. Also the access to post audio messages from audioblogger is good.

And then, there’s Yahoo 360 that has merged with Flickr, and from where you would also have access to your Yahoo email, your groups, your Messenger contacts and your  own homepage editor  at geocities, etc etc
http://360.yahoo.com/susannenyrop
http://elgg.net/netopnyrop
http://worldofwebheads.blogspot.com