Talkwheel – just another collaborative tool?

I came across this new tool this morning www.talkwheel.com as i was browsing through my rss feeds. I had just been talking to a colleague about strategies and online tools that would enable our students to interact more with each other in class, instead of just the teacher led discussions and interactions. I know there is no such thing as a silver bullet solution but could this be a tool that our students would be keen to engage in?

To me it looks like an old fashioned threaded forum but attractively packaged to be more visual than simple text flowing down the page. Though with any tool, it depends on the skill of the teacher/facilitator to engage students in learning - we can't and shouldn't rely on the 'gee whiz' factor of online tools alone to hook our kids into learning.