Enter the Surface
While making one of my periodic visits to the mothership back in Redmond I had the opportunity to see the latest version of Microsoft's surface - a new was to interact with computers with human gesture alone. Essentially, this technology is designed to look for certain gestures and behave in a certain way. Simple right?
So, how is this different than tablet technology? Surface acutally uses a set of cameras that look UP through the screen to interpret users's movements (that's right - it can track several users at a time). This means that you don't have to actually make any physical contact with the surface before it will react. Also, the surface is capable of recognizing visual symbols (ie barcodes). The icing on the cake is when you combine a wifi device with the Surface's recognition technology. Put a digital camera on tech surface - immediately download all of the pictures for viewing and sorting.
In the demo attached you'll see quite a few commercial applications of this technology - AT&T has already started to deploy Microsoft Surface in stores around the us. However, I've also gotten quite a bit of interest from schools. To me, this is quite bit more interesting - what are the pedagogical applications of the table? Back in the day information was the centerpiece - and the browser became the school's centerpiece of allowing students access to this wealth of knowledge. The current buzzword around the blackboard (or whiteboard) now is clearly collaboration. Employers need it to function - and schools are realizing its value in such a diverse and rapidly changing working world. My dream is for the Surface to become the collaborative centerpiece of the school systems.
Surface makes collaboration fun. In the attached demo you'll see a bunch of hands reaching to play with this technology and work together to eagerly operative the software. These hands all belong to distinguished faculty members from universities around the world - all excited like school children at the prospect of being able to manipulate digital objects just like physical ones. Imagine how real students will react?
Microsoft Surface demonstration by Barb Marshall - Surface Marketing Manager:
