Don't scratch my surface!

Imagine pupils have been on a trip and taken digital pictures. You would need to plug the camera into the whiteboard laptop for all to see the images. These could then be annotated and saved as a notebook (or flipchart), or printed for follow up work. But wouldn't it be far quicker and more collaborative for pupils to do that in groups and without any fiddly USB leads.

Similarly for teachers when sharing plans or files, would it not be good to do this without plugging in pen drives? Just place your laptop or PDA on a table, shuffle through the files, as if they were paper and voila -there is next weeks literacy- Let me drag it into your device with my finger.(SMART BOARD stylee)

This is a reality with the new Microsoft surfaces- which is where Microsoft get into the whole interactive whiteboard thing- except rather than being mounted to a wall it is on a table.

Exciting yes- but I considering how this would be used. Does this just replace pen drives, network sharing, SD cards and turn the whiteboard into a tabletop. If so then we just get an expensive whiteboard on top of our tables. But perhaps not - used inventively this surface could facilitate collaboration between children as they work in groups and bring an added dimension to year group planning.

10 years from now ICT coordinators will be moaning that their heads haven`t invested in surfaces for all their classrooms yet and there will be debates about putting these in the nursery or reception. mmm sound familiar