Any ideas?

Cheers
Alan

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You could go on about numbers of resources but have you actually looked at them? Any content I have ever sampled from promethean site has been very poor. Although SMART have less I have found what I did get to be much higher quality. The numbers quoted here about how many members of the forum aren’t very useful if you actually look only about 1500 people have ever written more than 2 posts, and since the forum has been going for a lot longer than the smart one I’d say thats pretty poor, having said that I do think their forum is very useful as is the smart forum.

You’ll never get past the touch idea though, touch will always win this race in my opinion, it is what people gel with much more easily, the technology leaders of the world like microsoft and apple arent creating pen based solutions, its all about touch. If promethean made a touch board I’d probably be happy using it, although their software is harder to use and has lots of features that arent used much making it more complicated to navigate.

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Buy the projectors, every classroom should have one, then buy student use computers and internet connections, then have the kids build their own interactive whiteboard using Jonny Lee’s Wii hacks.

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- also to respond to an earlier post about multi-touch – SMART has had that for a long time on their 2000i and other rear projection units that use the cameras in the corners. I still havent seen anything impressive about multi-touch from anyone. I saw a Promethean demo and they were showing it, but they just kept on talking about students racing/competing… not really a pedagogically sound practice… I mean, it is cool in the demos you see on teachertube, but those are things that could be just as cool with a single-touch gesture as well.

For the Airliner, the surface of the tablet maps out to the writing area on the board, so if you’re at all used to using a tablet for input, it’s ideal. Plus, it’s Bluetooth, so you can walk around the classroom, and all of your tools are still accessible. The Senteos are amazing – they give an interactive dimension to classroom discussion previously very difficult to obtain – you can get feedback and answers from students who would never consider speaking up in class. Good stuff.

The only hardware improvement I’d be interested in on the whiteboard front is multi-touch, but since it mimics a mouse input, I can’t see that happening without a complete hardware refresh… it’s too bad, because the Hitachi IWBs that have it are really impressive. However, that’s a minor consideration.

On the software front, Notebook and SmartIdeas are pretty good, and I know that Smart works to improve them continuously. The latest version of Notebook addresses most of the concerns I had with version 9, and apparently the feedback from teachers was one of the biggest impetuses (impeti?) in making the changes they did.

I don’t have any experience with the Promethean boards, so I can’t comment on them at all, but I will say that the extent to which the IWB can change the classroom is exactly the length to which the teacher is willing to let it. We can deploy SmartBoards into every classroom in our division, but unless the teachers in those rooms are willing to use them to transform their teaching, they will be nothing more than high-tech chalkboards…

Ian H.s last blog post..Awesome & useless

As a contribution to this discussion, I will state our objective analysis of why we chose Promethean, and why we believe it has been such a success. This is not to say that we will remove our existing Smart Boards. Obviously, they will continue to be used to advance teaching and learning. What follows is about our evaluation and about our observation.

HARDWARE
The precision capabilities of the Promethean Activboards make them ideal for even the most precise application software, such as music notation. The simplicity of left-click, right-click, and hover functions make the board instantly compatible with all software solutions. The number of software companies that have and are developing partnerships with Promethean is a testimonial to their compatibility.

SOFTWARE
Activstudio and Activprimary are well designed and intuitive for the beginner. Promethean’s free online training is a well-constructed sequence that enables even “non-tech savvy” teachers to become familiar and comfortable with the applications. Activprimary is a gem, and it is well suited to the early grades. The software license permits teachers to have their own copy on any computer that they use. All software upgrades are free forever.

RESOURCES
The Promethean software resources, combined with the online resources from Promethean Planet, have pushed this over the top in our district. This is the Number One reason for its rapid success. It doesn’t really matter how many registered users are in the mix. That’s not what counts. What does matter is how many resources are available and how accessible they are. Promethean Planet resources are searchable by topic, or by State Standard. In addition, the User Forum is rich with dialog about resources in any area.

DEBUNKING MYTHS
1. Early elementary students have no difficulty using the pen. In fact, as teachers and parents, we encourage our students, and even our toddlers to learn to hold and use pens, markers, and crayons from any early age. When our Kindergarten students hold their own personal whiteboards, they use markers with them — not their fingers. There is not a fine motor skill issue. The objects on the screen are appropriate to the level of the instruction.

2. The pens do not get lost. Two pens come with each board, and in most of our classrooms both of the pens are left in the holders on the side of the boards all the time. In 27 classrooms, we have not had a single pen lost this year. Whether it’s elementary school or high school, the “lost pen” fear is a non-factor. At the district level, we have decided to buy 2 extra pens, in case one accidentally gets stepped on by a football player. If lost pens is a factor of concern in a classroom, then the teachers can suspend the pen from a neck cord, just as they do their school ID, and often their keys. Lost pens…not an issue.
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In summary, we have used both Smart and Promethean. We will build our future transformed classrooms with Promethean. It’s the most successful implementation that we have had in my career.

SMART can do rollovers and all those other ‘fancy’ flash transitions/interactions – it’s part of the free Lesson Activity Toolkit in the Notebook software.

And, in reference to core business – if one ooks at SMART’s numbers, their core business is education- saying SMART is business focused because they do well in the business sector is not a whole truth.

Again, like every post I write – they all have the same resources, services, etc. It is about the reps in your area and the local version of that support that will make the difference. They all have lots of ed consultants – but it is about the one in your area and their ability to provide the proper support you need.

* Promethean started as an education company and that is their core business still to date, regardless of which country you are talking about. Please check your facts.
*Having used both and also preferring Promethean, I like the fact that things do not jump around when trying to right on the ACTIVboard. The fact that the point of contact that engages the technology is at the tip of the ACTIVpen and not the moment I touch the board with my hand, shirt etc make a huge difference in smoothness of use.
*No other company that I have found to date offers a seperate software for the primary level. ACTIVprimary is incredible! Talk about intuitive and eye catching. If you have not seen this you really must.
*Can SMART do rollovers?
*Does SMART have Teaching and Learning Consultants to work with districts to ensure integration of the technology? I know Promethean does. And they are FREE of charge!

It sounds like my brother in laws comparing their new trucks. One has a Ford and one drive a GM…

Here are a few of my reactions to the comments here:

— Both are good products. I LIKE the Promethean better.
— The rep only talked about Smart when I asked about Smart. We spent 99.9% of our time talking about Promethean.
— I didn’t know you could right click with the Smart. (Thanks, I like this network thing, Dean)
— Promethean software is very customisable, in fact any “canned” lesson you download can be changed to meet your needs. There are also hundreds of “Resource Packs” containing thousands of items free for the download.
—Promethean “Teacher Feature” shows 3-4 minute videos of how teachers implement the hardware and software in the classroom. A great feature. The online PD seems very good with Promethean.
—Promethean Pen is as likely to get lost as the Smart markers. Smart has three markers, three colours. Promethean starts with four colours, but the number of colours can be increased to 32 for the Filpchart Software.
—I don’t know about Smart, but it is easy to make a Flipchart on the Promethean and export it to Word, Powerpoint, HTML, or pdf. I found this very useful. Whatever I put on the board I could print as a pdf for the students….
—One of the reasons I like Promethean is that it seems durable. The support certainly seems to be there BEFORE the sale, and only time will tell if they will be there after the sale!

The Promethean Planet users aren’t the part that impress me, it’s the contributions. It looks to me like people post something on SMART’s forum and it doesn’t get answered (based on data not observation – number of threads divided by number of posts), but on Promethean Planet each thread averages 6 responses.

As Dean said earlier the debate will not go away. Hopefully, debates like this will force Promethean AND Smart to continue to refine and improve their product. Competition is good and so is discussion.

Quantity does not equal quantity, but Promethean will throw the quantity in your face. Sure they have many more lessons on their site, but I’ve had to redo Promethean flipcharts because they’ve had factual and spelling errors. This is unacceptable. Check out the ActivAdvent lesson from Christmas, no way would I show that to 5th year students because some of the information is flat out wrong, or at least socially incorrect. I liken the quantity of Promethean resources to extra software you get when you buy a new computer off the shelf, from HP or Toshiba or what have you. I don’t use the extra software that comes with it, it’s bulky, unnecessary and of so-so quality, so it gets uninstalled right away so I can free up my HDD for the things I need.

Take any product from scratch and just use it. Don’t listen to the spin from any company, don’t use it in the environment they will set up for you. Walk up and use it as you would, not as they would have you. If you make your decision on that, then you will be happy with whatever you buy. For me that was just smartboard, even though I have to use both.

but they are very limited in functionality