Lino (Discussion & Post Assessment Tool)

Lino is an online collaboration platform that lets teachers and students collaborate using virtual sticky notes, pictures, and text on a virtual canvas. As a teacher, you can have multiple classes set up.  For me, this means I can have my five 3rd grade classes (one each day) have one canvas to collaborate on a project each day of the week.  Same for the rest of the grades. 
Lino is much prettier than Answer Garden, but that also makes it more complicated for some audiences. It can get quite colorful and very busy to look at. There are also a lot of teacher controls, and a lot of user controls.  I literally open Lino up, teach orientation for 2-3 minutes, and let the kids start using it while I'm talking.  As the kids start playing with it, they discover new tools, and they learn from each other how to use the multitude of controls.  

You'd have a much harder time using the output of this platform into a word art maker (like Tagul). Lino also has a iPhone and Android app download that is quite nice for adults or BYOD events like conferences.

Other uses that I have used with students include students making their own bulletin board of pictures, notes, and reminders.  I have used this program for many years and it keeps getting more intuitive and this allows me to use it with younger and younger students. At one point, they even simplified their name. It used to be LINOIT, and people were confused on how the "OIT" should be pronounced.

**Both pictures are screen shots of the landing page of Lino.