S'Cool Tools: 5 Great Tools to Perk Up Your Classroom and Encourage Your Students

Dr. Maureen Brown Yoder lists 5 tools that she feels have the potential to "transform your lessons".   Dr. Brown chose the following tools because she felt they: 1) were powerful in enhancing the teacher's lessons, 2) were easy to learn, and 3) were either new or an improvement over an earlier version.  The tools are:
1) We Do Robotics Construction Sets by Lego--great for younger students who love building with Lego blocks and and use their creations on computer screens as animations to show their counterparts in other countries.
2) Smart Table by Smart Technology which is an enhancement of a smart board and on four legs.  Capable of having up to eight students working on various lessons, the Smart Table is quite pricey at $7,999!
3) AVer Pen works with AVer Plus software from Avermedia.  Works like an interactive whiteboard only without the whiteboard!  The image can be projected onto almost anything and the pens can "write" on them.  The teacher's pen can interact with up to six student pens at once and have a 100 foot operating radius.
4) Multiuser Virtual Environments or MUVS from Ramapo Islands seemed to interest me the most out of all the tools, because it it allows the students to actually become part of a virtual environment. And there are environments for just about all core subjects.  The EcoMUV is an ecosystems curriculem for middle school Life Science, and I was astounded that it had 10 fifty minute lessons  with ancillary i and teacher training for the this virtual environment.  Middle schools have used MUVS to get students excited about doing projects and learning.
5) The last tool listed is Google Apps Education Community by Google.  These are apps for teachers with various "tools for internet searching, collaboration and classroom activities."  These are free from Google, and I believe would be a boon to teachers as so many are now using apps in other areas of their lives.  It's also wonderful that teachers can share their ideas and advice on the available forum.
Of the five tools, I believe, as a middle school teacher, tools 4 and 5 would be the most valuable for me.  The others sound good, but tool 1. seems it would be more of a benefit to elementary teachers, and tools 2 and 3 seem like they could only be used in the most affluent areas as they seem rather expensive.