Five Things: Thoughts on Promethean
I went to a demonstration this afternoon about some Promethean equipment, including the interactive white board, student response systems and sound amplification. I have to say, I was impressed. Here is a short list of my random thoughts about Promethean equipment after the demo:
- Promethean IWBs operate differently than SMARTboards. Because of this you can touch the board with your hand without messing up what you’re doing with the pen. My students often have trouble with the SMART board because they either rest their wrists on it while they write or they put a hand on it to balance. The SMART Board DOES NOT LIKE to be touched in multiple places at once.
- The student response system Promethean makes is a lot easier to use than the Interwrite one I have used before. You can create questions on the fly and students can even text in short answers (which is cool.)
- Promethean equipment is all operated under one piece of software (Active Studio) instead of different ones for every piece of equipment. It’s really streamlined and nice.
- The setup I saw today had a board and projector mounted so they moved up and down together. It was an excellent setup because you can lower the board for little kids and you don’t have to re-align it!! Also the projector was mounted overhead and it was a lot better for shadows.
- Promethean has a reaching tool (wand) that works on the board. It’s basically a pen on a stick. This seems like a small thing, unless you teach pre-k and your students vary in height from about a foot and a half to four feet
