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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

We've been tracking the MIT-originated Siftables so far with grudgingly bemused expressions on our cynical, internet-hardened faces. Now we find out they're called Sifteo Cubits, and they've got a ...