Hitting the news today is Apple’s patent application with the World Intellectual Property Organization for a user interface that can be reorganized by dragging elements on the screen to rearrange them. Originally submitted in December and published last week, the patent application doesn’t really offer a lot of news—in fact, you’ve probably already used this technology if you’ve reconfigured the icons that appear across the bottom of your iPhone’s iPod application. But this technology does offer some interesting possibilities in an educational setting. Imagine, for example, a “seating-chart” app that lets a teacher drag pictures of students into various configurations to record discussion or study groups or to assign students to particular projects… Or an app that lets students rank elements on a quiz or worksheet visually… After all, wouldn’t dragging make some of that stuff less of a drag?

Check out a good overview and some handy diagrams from the patent at AppleInsider and MacNN.