Siftables: Where Play and Learning Collide?

Have you seen the TED talk with David Merrill yet? The one where he demos these little building block thingies that are actually computers and can communicate with one another? While it’s over a year old, if you haven’t seen it yet, I’d highly recommend you take a look at it. The objects in the video are called Siftables and they are a product of work that Merrill started at the MIT Media Lab along with his partner Jeevan Kalanithi. Recently, Merrill and friends formed a start-up company called Sifteo to continue their work. They are closing in on a commercial launch of the product. From their website, Siftables are:

…sets of cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. Siftables act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them—piling, grouping, sorting—to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provide a new platform on which to implement tangible games...

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