Children’s toys are amongst the last places you’d expect to find toxic chemicals. After all,…

What if toys can communicate through light?
I really enjoyed this post by Disney research programme. I am one of those who is usually very critical about “christmas tree innovation”. By this I mean that I think about how a technology can have impact on education first, rather than being impressed by “tech for tech sake”. I liked the magic of the result though. We are already aware that light is a way to communicate (think about optical fibers for broadband connections) but thinking it could be done by common emissive devices, like lamps and LEDs is pretty new. It reminded me the use of morse code signals, the basic communication code par excellence, in some late science fiction movies (e.g. Interstellar) even though the purpose of the project seems targeting much higher. At least on technology. In fact while I quite like the magic of “painting” a dress of little lights with a magic wand, and I also like the use of such a simple -and open- electronic device like Arduino. Nevertheless I wonder what this technology could bring into education.