February 20, 2009 It is believed that many children and adults learn best when they use their hands to perform a task, and for young children, play-based activities are essential for acquiring ...

What if computers were more like a child's wooden blocks? Siftables are a new approach to computing developed by David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanthi. Each small square electronic tile has a small screen ...

MIT graduate student David Merrill was inspired by building blocks to design computerized blocks called Siftables. They are interactive computers each the size of a cookie and can sense each other and ...

Handling blocks is one of the earliest forms of play, and for generations the wooden toys have been found on the floor of every parent's home. Now, MIT graduate student David Merill has grand plans ...

Shown off at the 2009 TED conference (aka Mosquito Madness), these Siftables blocks are location aware, motion sensitive, touch interactive and work with other blocks to take on a variety of functions ...

The internet of things is here. It exists in our phones, our televisions, our pens, our tablets - and now in the most basic of play things, the building block. I've been waiting for the arrival of ...

The history of electronic playthings has always been pockmarked with disappointment. For every Milton Bradley Simon — a 1978 game so appealing that it stayed on the market for decades — there have ...

This little half-domino shaped/sized squares are actually individual really tiny computers. You build them together to add functionality to whatever pieces you already have. They each have a bunch of ...

These Siftables from MIT Media Labs are small Post It-sized displays with processing power built in, allowing it to communicate with other Siftables as well as detect motion and proximity. You’ll have ...

The cats and kittens at the MIT Media Lab are always on some next-level type of wackiness, and the Siftables project doesn't break from that trend. The concept seems simple enough: a collection of ...

[Curiouslee] put up some pictures of his Siftables burn in. He got them in the mail with all their accessories and decided to make a special box to carry it all. He started with an ArtBin parts box ...