What I Want for Christmas

What I want for Christmas is definitely this. It’s some sort of sketching tool that has the potential to be the Coolest Whiteboard Ever. Basically, you draw on it, and it converts what you draw into computer representations of objects in an environment – so that the objects can interact with each other, etc. , Rube Goldberg style.

For classroom technology, this would be absolutely brilliant. See, one thing you can do with it is draw a line around part of something. If your circle connects back in on itself, the board highlights the region in red, and you can then move it around, or else delete it by drawing a slash through it. Further features someone could add would be, say, handwriting recognition – so that your messy prof can scribble on the board and it converts what he writes into something aligned, neat and readable. Or else, maybe, it could have built-in abbreviations so that you write out only part of a word and it completes it for you. Hell, spellchecking might even come in handy! And the best part, of course, is no laborious erasing over chalkdust and/or whiteboard crap.

Naturally, these things are from MIT.