Quick Kinect Quarry

I have a post I'm working on. Not this post, another post that will be much grander in scale. Just thought I'd make a quick entry to reassure those that may suspect from past experience that I will abandon this blog after one post. This is not the case as I feel sure that I have at least one more long-winded rant of a post left in me. In the mean time this is a thought I had that I'm sharing now.

Could the Xbox Kinect have any redeeming education uses? Talented individuals have hacked the device and used it in a variety of brilliant ways Microsoft surely never intended (but they should have). One of my favourites is that surgeons have used the Kinect to access information on the fly hands-free which avoids having to re-sterilize themselves.

Of course I am not the first to wonder about Kinects possible educational uses. The people behind the site KinectEDucation.com have a video featuring many interesting ideas for Kinect use in education.

I wonder if there could be some literacy based Kinect uses? I'm thinking something like story time for kids during which someone reads from a book and as they do so there are activities on screen that would let kids interact with what's happening in the book. I'm sure someone's already working on that.

What do you think? Would Kinect in the classroom just be letting even more video games permeate children's lives? Or could re-purposing an entertainment device for educational use help to capture the attention of the ADD generation and be a real benefit to educators? Comment away!