Comic Life is a popular program on the mac which lets you create comic strip stories very easily.

The company is working on a Windows version and has released a free beta version for testing. It seems to be fairly robust. The only problems I’ve had are printing to a network printer and deleting objects ocassionally but these can be worked around.
Go to http://plasq.com/forum/comiclifewin for a free download.

Google Docs is a simple online word processor (and spreadsheet) with basic functions. With a decent online connection it responds quickly and can be used as a place to store documents. One of its strengths for a teacher is the ability for documents to be edited collaboratively. As an alternative to a wiki, it provides a familiar interface and ease of sharing. For many children it will be easier to use than a wiki. It is easy to look at different revisions and compare ‘before and after’ texts.

There are lots of features in Google Docs - some work better than others - but for simple collaborative working, it provides an easy way for a group to work on a piece of text together.