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Promethean Brings World’s Fastest Car To Maidenhead

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Promethean, the interactive learning technology provider, organised a rare opportunity for pupils from Maidenhead and Reading to see a life size replica of the Bloodhound Supersonic Car. They were also able to meet and question Richard Noble OBE about the Bloodhound project, and its attempts to set a new World Land Speed Record and exceed the 1,000mph milestone for the first time.

The event was organised by Promethean to mark the official opening of its new offices in Maidenhead. The company is the Bloodhound project’s official interactive education technology partner and aimed to create a genuinely exciting educational opportunity in the area to mark the occasion.

Promethean’s President of European Sales and Marketing, Paul Berry, commented: “Through our partnership with Bloodhound, we are working to give young people access to inspiring content, resources and tools to help engage them in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects that will improve their life chances. This is an ideal way to give pupils a day to remember, and set them thinking about the exceptional things that can be achieved through science and technology.”

Pupils representing Wessex Primary in Cox Green, Maidenhead; Cranbourne Primary in Winkfield; Emmbrook in Wokingham; Ranelagh in Bracknell; and Maiden Erlegh in Earley had the chance to see the 13.4m long Bloodhound replica and take part in interactive sessions involving rocket power, distance, time and speed using Promethean classroom technologies.

Building of the actual Bloodhound car is underway in Bristol. Powered by both a rocket and a jet engine, it has been designed to achieve speeds of up to 1,050mph, and is expected to become the world’s fastest car when it makes a new attempt on the World Land Speed Record in South Africa in 2012.

Along the way, the team behind the project also hope to foster a lifelong interest in science, technology, engineering and maths in young people and help develop a pipeline of talent for the future.

Via EPR Network
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Promethean Sponsors First Irish Teaching and Learning Festival

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Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has announced that it is to be the lead sponsor of the inaugural Irish Teaching and Learning Festival, held in Citywest Conference Centre, Dublin on 15th and 16th October, 2010.

The conference will feature education thought leader, and Oscar winning producer, Lord David Puttnam, presenting his vision of how Ireland can better meet the educational needs of its new generation of learners. As a former president of UNICEF UK, and non executive director of Promethean, the Cork resident will bring some very thought provoking ideas to his keynote.

Graham Byrne, head of Ireland and Scotland at Promethean said: “There has been very strong demand for an Irish event to highlight the very latest resources, technologies and trends in teaching. As a global leading educational technology company and creator of the ActivClassroom suite of classroom solutions, we are delighted to support Ireland’s first ever interactive conference and exhibition.”

Promethean will be demonstrating how its ActivClassroom solutions, comprising of interactive whiteboards, learner response systems and specialist teaching software, are bringing to life the promise of ICT in education, improving engagement and results for learners and teachers. There will also be a host of practical teaching workshops, live demonstrations and an exhibition of the latest education tools for visitors.

Via EPR Network
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Promethean Acquires SynapticMash

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Promethean World Plc (LSE:PRW), a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has announced that it has agreed to acquire SynapticMash Inc, a start-up US education formative assessment software company. The acquisition is expected to complete before the end of July 2010.

The initial consideration is $10 million in cash, of which $1 million is deferred for 18 months. A further performance related consideration of $3 million may be payable in 18 months, dependent on retention of key SynapticMash employees and sales targets.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Seattle, SynapticMash has developed a sophisticated and modular cloud-based formative assessment platform that is being marketed to US school districts through a subscription model. Its learning management system, LearningQube, transforms the way schools collect and manage classroom data, enabling teachers and administrators to better assess and track student performance.

Formative assessment is the evaluation of student performance instantaneously during the learning process rather than by formal exam typically at the end of a term or school year. It enables teachers to modify lessons during the progression of a course, based on their students’ levels of understanding, leading to differentiated instruction and improved academic achievement.

SynapticMash directly fits Promethean’s education strategy and significantly strengthens Promethean’s formative assessment and learner response systems (LRS) offering. LRS are handheld devices that allow students to contribute in real time during lessons, and enable teachers to instantly gauge student understanding.

SynapticMash’s LearningQube software will be fully integrated with Promethean’s LRS devices and specialised educational software, ActivInspire, to create a new and powerful formative assessment proposition for the education market, enabling teachers as well as school administrators to improve student assessment and performance.

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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 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.

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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.”

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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.

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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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