I'm a big fan of educational technology, anything that helps kids learn better and faster, and this TED video hosted by David Merrill from MIT Media Labs is truly astonishing.

Merrill's new invention is something called Siftables, a high tech take on the old baby blocks most of the past and even current generation would have played with while infants.

The premise is simple, allowing the user to learn math, music, spelling and other skills by organising (playing with) the blocks. But like many other seemingly simple devices, some insane technology is usually happening behind the scenes. Each block has it's own colour screen and thanks to inbuilt wireless communication, each is 'aware' of the other making for some potentially awesome learning applications. And of course they are light and small enough for little hands.

By my little spiel here can't possibly do justice to the video below.