A number of tools that have immediate and obvious value include:
Announcements: This is for site-specific announcements. Announcements are group- and section-aware. Within a site, you can define groups and their memberships. This allows for flexible division of information flow, especially for larger sites with more than ten or twenty members. Some tools are group- and section-aware and others are not.
BasicLTI: This is for connecting external tools through the Basic LTI giving the external tool the appearance of being a native tool. Online help:
/portal/help/main?help=sakai.basiclti
Chat room: The chat room is used by many for interactive distributed feedback and group building. It is mostly used for peer-to-peer communication and is a valid tool for building social coherence. Online help:
/portal/help/main?help=sakai.chat
News: This is an excellent way to bring in RSS feeds from various sources, including externally-managed blogs. The tool gives immediacy...