Category Archives: Elementary School

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
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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.

Via EPR Network
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Promethean Announce New Collection Of Interactive Grammar Courses

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has announced a new collection of interactive grammar courses designed to help students develop critical language arts and writing skills.

Promethean Announce New Collection Of Interactive Grammar Courses

The new English Grammar II Essential course is being offered through a strategic partnership between Promethean Planet and Core Learning, an innovative publisher of K-12 digital content.

“Our goal is to give teachers a curriculum that encourages student participation and fosters a greater understanding and use of language arts concepts. We are delighted to offer this resource to the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are exploring new ways to make their Promethean ActivClassrooms even more effective,” said Core Learning President and CEO, Douglas Hatch.

The course has forty-one lesson plans which explain sentence structure and development, punctuation and capitalization as well as how to properly use speech when writing. Different course activities allow students to participate in the classroom using the ActivPen, ActivBoard and a Learner Response System, such as ActivExpression or ActiVote. Each lesson includes notes and teacher resources to help guide instruction and pre-built assessments designed for the interactive whiteboard to help teachers gauge how well students understand the concepts as they are being taught.

“As more and more teachers join Promethean Planet, our goal is to provide them with exceptional resources that help make learning more interactive for students. Beyond offering teachers access to a vast collection of quality content, we give them the opportunity to share best practices and ideas on how to build a 21st century learning environment,” commented Chief Strategy Officer Brent Taggart.

A free lesson from the course can be downloaded from the Promethean website. The course can be purchased and downloaded individually or as a complete program at the Promethean Planet Shop, an online store where educators can find a wide variety of digital content, including ActivInspire, the software needed to run this program and interactive whiteboard resources.

Via EPR Network
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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.”

Via EPR Network
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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.”

Via EPR Network
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Promethean Planet Membership Passes The Half Million Mark

Promethean, a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology, has announced that membership of Promethean Planet has passed the half million mark, doubling in only one year. Promethean Planet was launched in 2006 and in less than four years has become the world’s largest online community for users of interactive learning technology.

Promethean Planet Membership Passes The Half Million Mark

Available in ten languages with members in more than 150 countries, Promethean planet is free to join and enables teachers from around the globe to exchange ideas, share new and innovative lesson plans and have access to a wide variety of professional development materials. The site contains more than 16,000 fully customable lesson resources for all ages, representing more than 225,000 pages of teaching resources, and includes interactive whiteboard resources and premium interactive educational content from leading publishers such as Dorling Kindersley, National Geographic, Scholastic, Waterford Institute, Harper Collins and Oxford University Press.

Promethean Planet received the Worlddidac Foundation Award for Excellence in Education in 2008. Recent monthly statistics show that there were more than 250,000 unique visits, five million page views and more than 550,000 downloads on the site (November 2009). Planet is currently supported in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Kazakh and Arabic.

Via EPR Network
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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 whiteboard, Activboard 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.

Via EPR Network
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Promethean And National Geographic Unleash The Power Of Nature In Classrooms

Promethean, a global leader in education technology solutions, has introduced National Geographic Young Explorer ActivLessons; a series of interactive whiteboard lessons designed specifically for kindergarten and first grade students. The ActivLessons interactive whiteboard resources can be used on any brand of interactive whiteboard using a free download of Promethean’s Software: ActivInspire Personal Edition available for download.

Engineered to expand and enhance the reach of the popular National Geographic Young Explorer magazine, the ActivLessons provide a whole-class digital supplement to the series. The range of exciting activities for interactive whiteboards is guaranteed to spark the interest of inquisitive young minds.

Developed in partnership with the National Geographic Society, the Young Explorer ActivLessons educational resources are based on the stories and instruction in Young Explorer and feature stunning photography supported by group activities, narrated stories, printable worksheets and a full teacher guide. The National Geographic Young Explorer Magazine and ActivLessons work together to improve literacy skills and introduce learners to science and social studies.

While the Young Explorer ActivLessons teaching resources stand alone, they can also be used with the magazine, offering teachers multiple options to create engaging lessons that provide practice with reading strategies, build academic vocabulary and meet NCLB goals.

Brent Taggart, Head of Promethean Planet and Strategy said, “Promethean is thrilled to partner with National Geographic to produce the Young Explorer ActivLessons. Intended to be teacher led; the design and functionality of the ActivLessons facilitate versatility in the classroom by offering multiple options for student engagement and educator adaptability. All the activities contained are flexible, collaborative and extendable; key requirements of any content created for Promethean’s ActivClassroom.”

Fran Downey, Vice-President and Publisher of National Geographic added, “National Geographic Young Explorer is known for teaching important literacy skills through high-interest science and social studies content. The magazine connects to existing curriculum while inspiring students to care about our planet. The partnership with Promethean, a leader in developing interactive classroom solutions for the education market, allows teachers to present truly interactive lessons that will engage students and deepen understanding. This takes the printed magazine to a whole new level.”

Young Explorer ActivLessons can be purchased and downloaded through the Promethean Planet online shop where educators can also browse a wide variety of digital content.

Promethean Planet will be introducing a range of new functionality over the coming months to further address the modern-day educator’s needs.

Via EPR Network
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Welcome to EPR Education News

EPR Education News is a new blog, part of EPR Network, that is going to be focused on and will be covering the education news and stories from press releases published on EPR Network.

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