Ok, so this is pretty cool!  Samsung came out with a way to harness the power of Near Field Communication, the radio communication technology that you find on new phones.  I mentioned my new Galaxy Nexus and Google Wallet, which allows you to create an account, put money on it, then tap your phone to the little payment pads in certain businesses (Sheetz is one!!) and pay.  Pretty cool.  You can also use it for sending apps to other people’s phones who have NFC.

Like Bluetooth, though, NFC looked to die an early death as those two functions showed the limit of the technology.  Until Samsung released their TecTiles.  These stickers allow you to program certain functions that when you put your phone over them, they complete a task.  Like switching off your wifi and Bluetooth to save batteries.  Or sending a pre-arrange text message.  Or any other variety of tasks.  So that got me thinking, what about in the education space, especially if NFC comes to tablets.

• Have students tap a ‘wifi on’ when the teacher wants them to use it and tapping when he/she doesn’t.
• Tap for a certain bookmark or website
• Tap for a calendar of test/report assignment dates
• Tap for homework assignment

Yeah, lots of possibilities for this in the education space.  I will need to buy some to test them out!