The Microsoft Surface is a revolutionary touch-screen computing platform. Ostensibly, it has been developed for use in a commercial environment, such as hotels, restaurants, and shopping centres, but as a tool for education it has amazing potential, as Microsoft demonstrated at BETT.

The Surface is intuitive; several volunteers (including myself!) had a go and unanimously found it incredibly easy to use; the most incredible thing about this, of course, being the fact that there were 'several volunteers'. The technology was so engaging that people were queuing up to try it out.

It proved a great way to meet people, I found myself interacting with complete strangers quite happily as we tried simple tasks like putting the letters of a word in the right order. It was a wonderful ice-breaker, as the audience shouted words of encouragement at the volunteers I was struck by the impact this technology could have in a classroom.

So how does it all work then? Well...
The screen has multi-touch sensitivity that responds to natural hand gestures and real world objects.  Below the surface are five cameras in a half-speherical drum which can detect its surrounding environment and react to the actions of users.

"But Tom" I hear you say "that sounds too good to be true... an intuitive, engaging piece of equipment that fosters teamwork and includes a half-spherical drum full of cameras to boot, there must be a downside..." It would seem not, even tiny sticky hands present no challenge to the resilient and, most importantly, wipe clean surface. However, I would suggest that you ask me again when Microsoft announce how much their new wonder technology is going to cost.

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Tags: Microsoft , interactive learning