I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes trying out a Smart Table.

It is designed to be used by up to 8 pre-reading age kids, and seems very well thought-out. A favorite feature is that it requires the consent of all the kids to erase or change the contents.

I was intrigued by the teacher interface, which looked like a Flex interface with multi-touch features added. However, I soon realized it was created in Silverlight, as the context menu appeared several times. Adobe has plenty to be concerned about – Microsoft has stolen a march on their 7 years of development in a couple of years. The UI skin is virtually identical to Flex.

The Teacher interface is intriguing for how it facilitates the arrangement of learning interactions to be presented to students right on the table. Everything runs on a regular Windows PC with Windows Vista. The video is projected onto a touch surface which, while safe for kids, isn’t nearly as crisp as a flat screen.

I was struck by how powerful a change putting the screen on a table could be. I am tempted to try to build a home-brew one. Oh, and take another look at Silverlight?