A Durham University research group is investigating the possibility of putting multi-touch interactive ‘desks’ into classrooms to help children learn, Register Hardware reports.
This is an exciting development, because it brings the animation and interactivity of good teaching software to children in a way they will find intuitive. Students will be able to manipulate virtual objects just as if they were moving things around a table.
This has the added classroom benefit of allowing children to use a computer more as they use a desk, rather than being locked into eye-contact with a computer monitor, shut off from peers and teachers.
The SynergyNet system being devised to make the most of this technology in education has the aim, as ScienceDaily puts it, of ”…achieving active student engagement and learning by sharing, problem-solving and creating.” This will effectively “integrate ICT into the fabric of the classroom.”
Rather than ’simple’ interactive whiteboard or touch-screen systems which respond only to one finger or pointer at a time, multi-touch displays lets the user employ as many digits or appendages as he or she chooses.
Seen to well-publicised effect on Apple’s iPhone, multi-touch allows you to ‘grab’ onscreen items and throw them around, ‘pinch’, twist and turn objects as if they were stacks of paper on a real desk, or albums in a rack.
We’ll be intrigued to see if Multi-touch interfaces work with Maths-Whizz.