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Introducing Promethean

An Education Revolution

Interactive Demo of Promethean Products

Interactive Demo of Promethean Products

Downloads

Why ActivClassroom?

Promethean products

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FAQS

Promethean Background

Hardware and Software General Questions

Software Specific Questions

Teaching and Learning

Key Differentiators

Promethean Background

1. What is so different about Promethean?

Promethean are an educational technology company, with the emphasis on education. We work solely in the education market, unlike all the other vendors. This means we design, build and support for education, and are specialists in doing this.

2. Why buy from Promethean?

Promethean, as an educational company provide high quality, durable and educationally enhancing products just for the education market. They also provide un-paralleled teacher and educator support as well as worldwide technical support via the fastest growing educational user website in the world that has over 125,000 subscribers.

3. What support can I get here?

Your first level of support is from the official Promethean partner here, Fantastic Sales Corp. The second level of support is from Promethean’s global technical and educational support centres.

4. Can I trust Promethean as an established company that are here to stay?

Promethean are active in over 80 countries worldwide, employ over 600 people and are growing every year. They are a truly global player in the interactive classroom market. They are here to stay.

Hardware and Software General Questions

1. What is better about the Activboard compared to others on the market?

Because they are made just for education, they are solid and built to withstand the toughest environments – the classroom! There are no moving parts and all upgrades can be done via the computer connected to it.

2. Why use a pen, surely it’s easier to let people use anything, even their finger?

Promethean have consciously decided to use the Activpen for the following reasons –

  • Because the Activboard uses digital technology, not analogue like touch screen boards, the pen allows for highly accurate use.
  • The pen allows you to use all functions of a mouse, including roll-over.
  • The teacher remains in control so classroom management is easier.
  • The user can rest their hand on the board when writing. A single point of contact means it is not confusing for students.
  • The pen means that new developments like Activarena - multi-pen input, can be done, which can never happen on touch screen boards.

3. Can my students use the pen easily, and is calibration easy?

As students use a pen regularly, the Activpen is easy and instinctive to use. If you want to you can even switch off the right click function to make it even easier. The calibration is a quick and accurate 5 point process designed to minimise the time lost in a lesson.

4. What if there is a problem with the software, where do I get help from?

As Promethean manufacture everything themselves, all support is from one place and software and hardware are designed to work together.

5. We have art and craft lesson in the classroom. If students make the board dirty with paint, what can I do?

Because the board surface is a hard surface and the electronics sit behind this, the board can be cleaned with any non-abrasive cleaner - like a standard dry wipe board can.

6. Will it be a problem if students look at the Activboard all the time? Will the reflection of light hurt their eyes?

The board surface is designed with an anti-glare surface so reflection from the projector is minimal and therefore will not hurt eyes.

7. What is so good about an Activboard? Surely just using a digital projector is as good?

A projector alone displays but does not allow for interaction. The kinaesthetic element of being at the Activboard allows the teacher to keep the lesson flowing and at the pace they require, and allows the student to hear, see and do, which are the three key elements of how we learn.

Software Specific Questions

1. I have prepared a lot of materials. What can I do with them now? Do I have to change them all in .flp format?

The materials you already use can still be used with an Activboard. If you want to use your office documents you can, and even annotate on them using Activmarker. However, if you want the full functionality of all the Activstudio tools, you can for example import your PowerPoint presentations into a flipchart format or simply copy and paste text into a flipchart from any source.

2. Why not use PowerPoint as I am familiar and competent with this?

“My skills are value-added and the Activboard allows for that. The PowerPoint conversion is very good and using the annotation tools means it’s not stilted. But PowerPoint is linear and stilted, not creative, deep thinking, merging. Because of the tools, Activstudio allows creativity, I don’t see the other ways I can do … spotlight, reveal - different things I can arouse interest with.”

3. I have prepared the flipcharts with Activstudio. However, in class, I will use Activprimary. Will there be a lot of differences? Will all the functions work?

Both versions have been designed so the transition between them is as easy as possible. Nearly all the tools and functionality are the same. Activstudio does have more design capabilities such as being able to customise the toolbox. If you are not sure then you can access training materials, hints and tips etc. for free at www.prometheanplanet.com.

4. Something new again, it will take too long to learn how to use it!

Although you will need to find your way around the software, and using it with an Activboard, most teachers can get to grips with the basic functions in about 30 minutes. Once you have done this, don’t expect to know everything straight away-build your expertise slowly. For example, use it for a short activity in one lesson, and then next lesson a little more etc. and you will soon find you are extremely proficient. The training, tutorials and hints and tips on Promethean Planet are also a great way to find out not what the tools do, but how you can apply them to your teaching.

Teaching and Learning

1. How does the Activboard fit into our school curriculum which includes different subjects?

The whole range of curriculum subjects is provided for both in the resource library, and with 100’s of flipcharts freely available from Planet.

2. We do a lot of projects, discussion, group work and presentation in class. How does the Activboard match with these teaching methods?

Giving the students the opportunity to use the Activboard actually helps generate discussion, and is a great for teachers and students to use for brainstorming, planning and discussion activities. It also means that a quick and good quality record can be made of discussion work that can be used again, adapted, developed and changed as discussion and ideas develop.

Use of Activotes is also a great way to generate discussion and group work where opinions can be gathered, recorded, tested and re-assessed as part of a flipchart.

3. The Activboard is great for primary students, but why bother using it at a high secondary level and beyond?

Use of the Activboard has proved to be highly successful in improving teaching and learning right across the age ranges. At a secondary level the Activboard helps the teacher explain and illustrate complex and difficult concepts, and at higher levels is perfect for incorporating 3rd party subject specific software as well as using the tools in Promethean’s software. For example, engineering design software that can be used as the Activpen allows full mouse functionality.

4. Will the software be able to keep track of individual learning or keep record of assessment?

You can save any work done on the Activboard as you are going along. However, the Activote software that is already built into Activstudio and Activprimary is designed to gather, save and record individual student assessment information for the teacher.

Key Differentiators

The main thrust of this is not to criticise the opposition, but to focus on the positive points that demonstrate the strengths of Promethean. These can be summarised in 4 areas:

1. The Company

Promethean are an educational technology company, but the important thing to remember is it an educational company.

Promethean works almost exclusively in the education market, not with education as one of several vertical channels. Therefore everything they do is focussed on improving teaching and learning. Nearly 50% of Promethean’s company facing employees have a teaching or professional education background.

Therefore all products, support and expertise is concentrated just on the education market.

2. The Hardware

All of the hardware is manufactured by Promethean themselves, and is designed and manufactured for the education market only. For example, the hard surface Activboard with no moving parts is designed specifically for the teaching space where it will be under the greatest strain. All of the Promethean products are designed to be inter-operable so the teacher can add on Activotes, Activslates, Acvtivexpression devices easily.

3. The Software

Promethean have designed specific tool based software that allows the teacher to be as creative and inspirational as they want to be. Both versions, Studio and Primary are interoperable and are the envy of all the other IWB vendors in the world. This has been recognised internationally, for example Activstudio and Activprimary winning World Didac awards, and Promethean being awarded the World Didac quality charter which goes beyond ISO standards in educational initiatives worldwide.

4. The Support

Promethean provide a high level of technical and product support around the world, but what really distinguishes them from the other companies is the level of educational and pedagogical support they provide. Promethean recognise that it is not what you have in the class room that matters, it is what you do with it to improve teaching and learning that really matters. For example, promethean Planet has over 130,000 teachers freely using the resources, forum, training materials and educational help around the world. This is an incredible story of teacher and educators coming together to share ideas and teaching materials under the expert educational guidance of Promethean.


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