Educação pode mudar sua vida

An electronic paint brush developed in the US is helping children understand the world around them.

The I/O Brush is the brainchild of Kimiko Ryokai, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The device allows children to pick up colours and textures from their environment and paint with them on a large digital screen.

Ms Ryokai has dubbed it the I/O Brush as it has an input and an output. The children just call it the magic paint brush and use it in ways she never anticipated.

As a member of the Tangible Media Group at MIT, she seeks to create bridges between the physical world and the virtual environment of computers and networks.

In the context of image-making, she is interested in the difterent ways people can enter data into computers.

Ms Ryokai wanted to know what would happen if you could literally suck the ink from the environment.

“It is very clear that for young kids you can brush over things and pick up a colour and then paint with it,” she says. “The brush is one of the few tools we allow ourselves to be touched by.”

With the I/O Brush, almost anything can be a source of ink for painting, even your friend’s clothes, face or hair.