Not too long ago in the film Minority Report, Tom Cruise is shown manipulating objects on an interactive, multi-touch screen. That imagery piqued much interest in the world of education making many wonder if the touch screen was a tangible reality, or a mere fantasy generated by creative minds in Hollywood.
Fast forward to last month, and I am standing in front of a touch screen that almost does what Tom Cruise could. Well… almost! But it was enough for me to share with you what I saw, and reiterate the belief that products like these will be soon transforming the current landscape of our classrooms.
The product, called Prysm, is a visual, touch-centric collaboration platform where applications, content, video conferencing and the web can be combined into one space. Teams can interface seamlessly while creating and sharing content. The content is saved in ‘workspaces’ that are cloud-based, making it possible to access from any device, anywhere, at any time.
Moreover, its user-centered features make it a great fit for a collaboration-driven environment. It has dynamic content capability that allows the user to resize and annotate static and streaming video content from laptop or mobile devices. The user can take snapshots of the content including video and share it via email. Availability of a whiteboard and a scalable keyboard make it easy to brainstorm or take notes and input text, etc. Its real-time collaboration can be extended up to 10 Prysm systems which includes video-conferencing. Its ‘Follow Me’ feature automatically pans the screen focus to the currently active content of a mirrored system.
My colleague and I left the demo with our minds abuzz about the educational possibilities that could be harnessed with such a platform. And, although it’s pricing left it a little bit out of our reach, it reminded us, yet again, how quickly the terrain of education and communication is changing, and that we must keep up to stay relevant.
For more on Prysm:
