Tag Archives: interactive whiteboard

Promethean Introduces ActivEngage To Its Range Of Learner Response Systems

Promethean, a global leader in interactive learning technology, has launched ActivEngage, a new software version of its market leading Learner Response System*. This new application enables laptops or desktop computers to act as personal response devices, meaning schools can provide voting capability in classrooms via individual student computers instead of specific handsets.

Computer-per-pupil initiatives are increasingly being promoted by governments as a means of underpinning schools’ ICT strategies. That, along with schools focus on developing problem-solving and technology skills makes these a valuable classroom resource. The introduction of this software only version of Promethean’s Learner Response System has been designed to complement these initiatives and widen access to their assessment and engagement capabilities.

Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland has welcomed the development of the new software application, becoming the first local authority in the UK to adopt ActivEngage. It plans to introduce the software to primary and secondary schools across the region, following an initiative to ensure all pupils in its 122 schools have access to their own laptop, netbook or PC.

John Tait, Education Officer for Dumfries and Galloway local authority, explained: “It is vital that ICT is embedded into the teaching and learning process. Having enjoyed previous success with Promethean’s handheld voting systems, we wanted to maximise our ICT investment by providing all schools in Dumfries and Galloway with access to this assessment and opinion-gathering capability, without having to purchase additional hardware devices. ActivEngage was the perfect solution.”

Schools using ActivEngage can use the technology in a single classroom or across an entire campus. The voting interface floats over other software applications, enabling it to be deployed at any point in a lesson.

Promethean’s Head of European Education Strategy, Margaret Allen, commented: “Learner Response Systems have proved invaluable for providing teachers with flexible and exciting opportunities to engage, motivate and assess learners. Teachers gain instant insight into students’ understanding and can use the self-paced learning mode, whereby students work through different levels of question sets, to personalise learning to the capabilities of different individuals.”

Students are able to respond to a wide range of questioning formats using numbers, free text, symbols, or likert scales. Responses can be instantly displayed on an Interactive Whiteboard laptop or desktop computer and saved by the teacher for later analysis.

Promethean is also offering schools the chance to ‘try before you buy’, by enabling trial copies of ActivEngage to be downloaded and used free of charge from PrometheanPlanet.com, the world’s largest online interactive whiteboard community. This will give schools the opportunity to explore the benefits of ActivEngage and Learner Response Systems before purchasing the programme.

Via EPR Network
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Promethean Launch ‘Give Every Child A Voice’ Recycling Campaign

Promethean, the interactive learning technology business, is launching ‘Give Every Child a Voice’, a recycling campaign among Scottish schools to support the NSPCC’s ChildLine, the 24 hours-a-day helpline for children and young people.

Promethean is bringing together schools across Scotland to help raise funds for ChildLine by recycling old or unwanted mobile phones. For every 250 mobile phones a school collects, Promethean will donate £500 to ChildLine in Scotland and an ActivExpression Learner Response System will be awarded to the school.

The ActivExpression Learner Response System is a set of handheld pupil devices which allow every child to respond to questions by texting their responses.

All schools are encouraged to participate in the campaign and can sign-up via www.giveeverychildavoice.com, a dedicated campaign website.

There are around 2,150 primary and 375 secondary schools in Scotland, and Promethean hopes to enrol as many schools as possible to help generate a target of £250,000 for ChildLine in Scotland.

Once signed-up, schools will be provided with collection bins, literature and resources to help promote recycling, fundraising and awareness for ChildLine in Scotland.

X Factor finalists John and Edward Grimes, aka Jedward, are lending their support to the campaign by making a school appearance in Scotland where they will discuss recycling and raising awareness of ChildLine’s service.

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Promethean Joined By Jim Wynn As Chief Education Officer

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has announced the appointment of Jim Wynn to its senior management team as chief education officer.

Jim has over three decades of experience in education technology across more than fifty countries. He joins Promethean from Cisco, where he led their public sector consultancy for emerging markets, with an emphasis on education. Jim’s previous appointments include head teacher of two secondary schools in the UK where he pioneered the use of ICT, head of research at RM Plc, and partners in learning lead for EMEA at Microsoft.

Jim’s in depth global experience, both in education systems and serving education for highly recognised technology players, will further strengthen Promethean’s leading global position in the interactive learning technology market.

Jean-Yves Charlier, chief executive officer of Promethean, commented: “We are delighted that Jim is joining Promethean. His knowledge of education systems across the world, together with the benefits technology can bring to learning, will be invaluable in further shaping Promethean’s strategy and continued development of innovative products for the classroom.”

Jim’s appointment will help to strengthen Promethean’s pledge to bring to life the promise of 21st century learning, improving engagement and results for learners and teachers alike through the use of interactive whiteboards and other interactive learning technologies.

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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.

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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.”

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Promethean Announces Southampton To Adopt ActivExpression City-Wide

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has announced that, as part of its pioneering Assessment for Learning project, Southampton City Council has adopted Promethean’s ActivExpression Learner Response Systems across all of its 77 primary and secondary schools. This is the first time that a UK Local Authority has implemented such a large-scale, comprehensive adoption of ActivExpression, recognising the significant benefits they bring to teaching by improving the way students engage and interact.

The ActivExpression device, which is similar to a mobile phone in appearance and features an alphanumeric keypad, allows students to text responses to a range of question types from multiple choice to ‘open’ questions, and offers teachers an innovative way of assessing student progress and stimulating debate in lessons. Results can be instantly displayed on an interactive whiteboard for discussion in class, anonymously if required, and stored to help teachers assess students’ performance.

The funding for this project was a Harnessing Technology grant from Becta, the Government agency dedicated to promoting effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. Promethean’s ActivExpression Learner Response Systems will be rolled out to primary and secondary schools throughout Southampton in the spring term 2010. Teachers will be provided with comprehensive training to ensure they make best use of this new innovative technology.

Daryl Misselbrook, e-Learning Consultant for Southampton City Council, said: “We wanted to implement a technology that could offer students a more differentiated and personalised learning experience, which would improve engagement levels of all learners regardless of their abilities. In consultation with schools, we evaluated several systems and found Promethean’s ActivExpression offered the most benefits. It is simple to use, can be incorporated at any point during a lesson and is compatible with a range of interactive whiteboards. Teachers also liked the range of response and assessment options and found it the most durable and visually appealing.”

Duncan Wells, Deputy Headteacher at Hollybrook Junior School, participated in the initial pilot and described his experience using the new educational software: “One of the most valuable contributions of ActivExpression has been its ability to engage pupils, and this was something that teachers witnessed straight away – every child has a say and can take part, without fear of embarrassing themselves if they get it wrong. It makes it a highly inclusive tool, ideal for working with pupils with special educational needs or with mixed ability classes.”

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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.”

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Promethean Announces Launch of eLearning Award

Promethean and European Schoolnet have announced the launch of the ‘Best MST Learning Resource Golden Prize’ as part of eLearning Awards, Europe’s leading competition to reward excellence and best use of technology in education. More than 700 schools and teacher training institutions have registered to present their best projects making use of ICT for teaching and learning. The winners will be announced at a Prize-giving ceremony during the EMINENT 2009 Conference in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The prize aims to recognise teachers’ best learning resource or object in the field of mathematics, science and technology (MST). Promethean will offer the winner, selected by an international jury of experts, a full ActivClassroom including Promethean’s new interactive whiteboardActivboard 300 Pro with Dual Pen functionality and Integrated Speakers, a full set of ActivExpression Learner Response Systems, and latest specialised teaching software, ActivInspire 1.3. Promethean is a global leader in interactive whiteboards and education technology solutions with 100 countries benefiting f r o m its ActivClassroom products.

Marc Durando, Executive director of European Schoolnet said: “The eLearning Awards is a unique opportunity for schools and teacher training institutions in Europe and beyond to demonstrate how innovative they are and share with others their projects and ideas. This year we introduced the publication of the eLearning Awards entries on the Learning Resource Exchange, a library of learning resources f r o m 16 Ministries of Education and other content partners. This will help raise further the visibility of teachers participating in the eLearning Awards.”

“Promethean is pleased to be a sponsor of the eLearning Awards at the Eminent conference and in particular the award for best Maths, Science and technology learning resource award. As the only large classroom technology solutions vendor based in Europe, we are enthusiastic supporters of co-operation within the EUN Schoolnet and have been actively involved with both the Interactive Whiteboard working group and the Learning Resource Exchange (LRE)”, said Stephen Jury, Head of Education Strategy at Promethean.

“Our work in support of the European Ministries of Education who make up EUN Schoolnet is part of our overall commitment to spread best practices in teaching and learning to benefit opportunities for young people and quality in our education systems,” he added.

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