Tag Archives: Interactive whiteboard tools

Promethean Helps School Host Premiere Of Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

Promethean, a global leader in interactive education technology solutions, presented Riverside elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia with an ActivClassroom after the school emerged triumphant over 5,000 other schools competing in a nationwide contest to mark the gala premiere of the motion picture Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Riverside submitted an impressive proposal to convert its auditorium/gymnasium into a movie theater, and promised that its students would generate Hollywood-style excitement for the unveiling of the long-awaited film based on the first of Jeff Kinney’s best-selling books. The prize consisted of an ActivClassroom including an ActivBoard interactive whiteboard, a set of 32 ActivExpressions, ActivSlate and ActivSound and the opportunity to hold the gala premiere of the film.

The premiere event was held in conjunction with the National Education Association’s (NEA) “Read Across America” program, which focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources; the NEA has designated March as National Reading Month. NEA also sponsored the contest, along with 20th Century Fox, School Library Journal, and publisher Harry N. Abrams Inc.

The Riverside Elementary safety patrol had special “security” duties on the red carpet. Also providing key assistance was WRES-TV, where some Riverside pupils – and budding news anchors – served as part of the morning news team.

F r o m its origins as a series of online cartoons, Diary of a Wimpy Kid exploded onto the pop culture scene when Jeff Kinney’s first “novel in cartoons” was published in 2007. Diary of a Wimpy Kid spent almost three years on The New York Times’ children’s best-seller list, and was translated into 33 languages. The book captured the imaginations of an army of formerly “reluctant readers,” and launched countless video reviews, social networking fan groups, and parties celebrating the release of each new Wimpy Kid book.

Via EPR Network
More Education press releases

Promethean Wins Major Spanish Tender

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has been awarded a multi-million euro contract to install 4,550 of its ActivBoard+2 interactive whiteboards, together with ActivInspire, Promethean’s specialised teaching and learning software, in 1,900 schools in the Spanish region of Andalucia. This represents around a 70% share of the total number of interactive whiteboards available under this tender.

Promethean Wins Major Spanish Tender

With over 8 million inhabitants and over 6,000 primary and secondary schools, Andalucia has the largest population of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions. Completion of this roll-out of IWB systems will see some 8% of the estimated 78,000 classrooms in Andalucia equipped with interactive whiteboards*. This project is being funded through the Spanish Government’s Escuela ICT 2.0 programme, one of a number of financial stimulus
packages targeted at education technology currently being implemented across the EU.

Beyond the classroom, teachers are able to join PrometheanPlanet.com, the world’s largest online community for users of interactive display system technology. Promethean Planet is available in ten languages, including Spanish, enabling more than 530,000 members from around the world to connect and exchange ideas, share new and innovative lesson resources and access a wide variety of professional development materials such as interactive whiteboard tools.

Paul Berry, Promethean’s President of European Sales and Marketing, said: “We are delighted with this significant contract win, which follows a comprehensive tender process and demonstrates Andalucia’s preference for Promethean’s interactive learning solutions. We believe that one of the key reasons for our success was the quality of our integrated ActivClassroom offering, which brings together our ActivBoard interactive whiteboards, ActivInspire educational software and training, and our teacher community, Promethean Planet. This contract is further evidence of the growing adoption of interactive learning technology in Europe, which is a key growth market for Promethean.”

Via EPR Network
More Education press releases

Promethean Launches Test Prep Course

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has launched a new programme to help prepare students for college entrance exams.

Promethean Launches Test Prep Course

Created in collaboration with the Chicago International Charter School (CICS), the Preparing for Standardized Tests program is designed to improve student’s performance on the reading and math sections of the PSAT, ACT, and SAT exams.

The Preparing for Standardized Tests program, a collection of interactive whiteboard (IWB) lessons, engages students in mastering essential college readiness and provides them with advanced test preparation. Students can practice how to answer questions from standardized tests using the guided practice lessons and the innovative interactive whiteboard tools of Promethean’s ActivClassroom. Every week, they will complete two essential skills lessons and answer the corresponding practice questions that are presented in a formal testing format.

“This innovative collection of lessons has been carefully designed to support the development of core college readiness skills using our ActivClassroom technology. We believe students will find these unique interactive lessons helpful when preparing for important college-entrance exams,” commented Brent Taggart, Chief Strategy Officer for Promethean.

Preparing for Standardized Tests extends CICS’ ACT Practice Tests, an earlier series of test preparation courses developed by the school. In creating the new program, CICS licensed its intellectual property from their tests and consulted on the development of the core content of the lessons. In keeping with the mission of CICS to prepare all students with a college preparatory education, this new IWB program fully utilizes the interactive power of ActivInspire software and the ActivExpression learner response systems from Promethean.

Via EPR Network
More Education press releases

Promethean Gets The Scottish Vote

Following the implementation of Promethean’s ActivExpression learner response system, an innovative handheld voting device, Students in Scotland are getting the vote early at the Scottish Parliament’s on-site education centre in the Holyrood building.

Promethean Gets The Scottish Vote

ActivExpression is being used to enhance the Parliament’s education programme, by making activities more interactive, engaging and relevant to the young visitors. Using ActivExpression, students are given the chance to ‘vote’ on key political issues and their responses provide education staff with opinions to encourage, debate and enhance review sessions at the end of the visit.

Alongside ActivExpression, Scottish Parliament chose to implement additional ActivClassroom solutions, including Promethean’s ActivBoard interactive whiteboard solution and accompanying interactive whiteboard tools and ActivInspire software. Bringing topics to life, education staff have used the technologies to create lively resources on the history of Holyrood and daily duties of parliamentary members, incorporating a variety of multimedia, including images, videos and sound.

Margaret Allen, head of European market development at Promethean, commented: “This is a fantastic example of how the ActivClassroom is being used in an alternative learning environment to promote participation and collaboration in a way that appeals to today’s digital learner.”

Beyond the Parliament’s on-site education centre, ActivClassroom technologies have been integrated into Holyrood’s ‘chat room’, a space where visiting students get the chance to question Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). To ensure the effectiveness of these questioning sessions, Parliament staff decided to implement Promethean’s ActivSound audio enhancement system, to make sure that students are fully engaged and involved in the experience.

Via EPR Network
More Education press releases

Promethean Unveils Self Paced Learner Response System

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, demonstrated the self-paced learning functionality of its popular ActivExpression Learner Response System at the British Education & Training (BETT) Show 2010. With its unique ability to allow each student to work through question sets at their own pace on individual handsets, while also allowing teachers to instantly view progress via a ‘teacher dashboard’, the self-paced learning proved an immediate hit with learners and educators of every age group.

Promethean Unveils Self Paced Learner Response System

Using self paced learning, teachers can pose a series of questions to the class, grouping them into categories, for example, by levels of ease. The system then automatically allows a learner to progress to the next level of difficulty if they correctly answer questions. Teachers can programme rules, determining the number of questions a learner needs to answer correctly before they are moved up to the next level or alternatively set the software to randomise questions and prevent learners from conferring on an answer.

Alison Lydon, Head of Junior School Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at The Mary Erskine and Stewart’s Melville Junior School, was involved in a pilot of the new self paced learning application. The response from the seven and eight year olds involved in the trial was extremely positive: “We had great fun,” said Alison. “The children loved it, the ease of use was staggering, and the teaching and learning potential was massive.

“The children really were able to work at their own pace. Questions appeared quickly on their screens and children who were able to answer questions easily were not held back by others who took longer. Children could progress to harder questions when they were ready to, rather than when a teacher thought they should.”

Via EPR Network
More Education press releases

Promethean’s Global Distribution Doubled In Three Years

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive educational technology, has announced that, following the installation of its ActivClassroom products in Panama, the total number of countries deploying Promethean technology has reached 100. This is double the number compared to only three years ago and reflects both the pace with which educational systems are introducing interactive learning technology and the rapid global growth of Promethean.

Promethean’s ActivClassroom helps bring learning to life and improve engagement and interaction between teachers and students, thereby helping raise learning standards. The ActivClassroom comprises the interactive whiteboard -ActivBoard, interactive whiteboard tools, Learner Response Systems (ActiVote and ActivExpression) and a suite of specialised teaching software (ActivInspire).

To date, over 500,000 Promethean ActivBoard interactive whiteboards have been purchased by schools, bringing the number of students worldwide now being taught with the aid of Promethean technology to over 12 million. In addition, in 2009 alone, over a million students were introduced to Promethean’s Learner Response Systems, making the Company the largest provider of these systems in the K-12 market during the year*.

Iwan Streichenberger, Chief Marketing Officer of Promethean, commented: “Today’s announcement is a reflection of the speed with which Educational technology is being introduced into classrooms and transforming teaching across the world. Our broad geographical reach means that we are well placed to capitalise on further opportunities in this rapidly growing global market.”

Via EPR Network
More Education press releases