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"In five years, IBM thinks computers will touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. Sensing devices will aid online shoppers (touching products), parents (interpreting the sound of baby cries), chefs (cooking a perfectly tasty and healthy meal), and doctors (smelling disease). No word on a sixth sense, as yet the sole domain of humans."

With the limited technological capabilities of tablets, touch-screen laptops are becoming options for users who want a device with a touch-screen component along with the regular functions that most laptops provide.

"If you don't have a resume, what do you have? How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects? Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch? Or a reputation that precedes you? Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up? Some say, "well, that's fine, but I don't have those." Yeah, that's my point. If you don't have those, why do you think you are  remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don't have those, you've been brainwashed into acting like you're sort of ordinary."

Tables, counters and whiteboards will eventually become displays. Meeting rooms will have touch panels, and chalk boards will be replaced by large systems that have digital images and documents on a display that teachers can mark up with a stylus.

Creating a workable Minority Report-like screen isn't very hard but what about an entire room or building that responds to touch, voice, and movement? Now that's hard. That, however, is the goal of OpenArch, a project by designer Ion Cuervas-Mons that uses projectors, motion sensors, and light to create interactive spaces.

"pick a video, add your magical touch and track your students' understanding"

"We tend to over think some things in life and here's proof.  Do you suffer from high levels of narcisim or low self esteem?  Or, maybe you use Facebook, because it's just a fun way to keep in touch with friends?"

"TASCAM's iM2 turns the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch into a high-quality stereo recorder. A pair of condenser microphones---the same high quality as TASCAM's best-selling DR-series recorders---plugs into the dock connector of your Apple device. The microphones are adjustable over 180 degrees for the best sound placement."

Aireal, a device that lets users feel ghostly objects created purely with puffs of air, is their latest wonder.

"Hersh believes there is another major factor driving the gap between retention rates in face-to-face programs and those in the rapidly growing world of distance education: the lack of a human touch."

"Hapkit is an open-hardware haptic device designed to be very low-cost and easy to assemble. Hapkit allows users to input motions and feel programmed forces in one degree of freedom. This enables interactive simulation of virtual environments that represent realistic physics (such as springs and dampers) and creative new touch sensations (like textures and buttons). The Hapkit can be assembled using household tools, costs less than $50 for all components, including the microcontroller board, and is easily set up and programmed by novices."

"Hagan writes her own very successful blog, Math = Love, part of the Math Twitter Blogosphere, on which she says she has met wonderful friends - and her boyfriend. She says she never expected her own blog to get almost 3 million page views. It's a combination of project ideas and very cute "Things Teenagers Say." (Sample: "I'll be here all week with the pi jokes. I'm like a baker.") After learning so much from blogs herself, Hagan says, "I felt like I should give something back to the community I'd been stealing ideas from." But for her, it's about more than just exchanging ideas: "It reminds me that I'm not alone.""

The company, founded in 2006, uses an ultra-low electrical current to charge very thin durable coatings (made of a proprietary substance that can be applied to "almost any surface of any size") on a standard touchscreen. This creates a small attractive force to finger skin that can be modulated; sensations such as texture, edges and vibrations can be felt by the user.

"One that fits here is, "To an educator with a computer, everything looks like information." And the more prominent we make computers in schools (and in our own lives), the more we see the rapid accumulation, manipulation, and sharing of information as central to the learning process-edging out the contemplation and expression of ideas and the gradual development of meaningful connections to the world."