Promethean World
| Company type | Privately Held Company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Education Technology |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Headquarters |  Promethean House, Lower Philips Road, Blackburn, Lancashire |
Number of locations | Offices & Facilities in UK, USA, France, Germany, Hong Kong & China |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Activboard, Activslate, Activpanel, Activtablet, Activote, ActivExpression, Activwand, Activstudio, Activprimary, Promethean Planet |
| Services | Technical Support, Professional Development, Training, Implementation Management, |
Promethean Ltd is a UK based company that produces interactive educational technology for the global market. Currently the company operates in over 70 countries.
About Promethean
Promethean Ltd was established in the late 1990s to market the Activboard Interactive Whiteboard[1].
Promethean specialises in large format interactive surface technologies, software, digital projectors, Audience Response Systems, Content & Online Community Tools. Promethean also designed and developed its own proprietary radio technology in order to allow communication between the key components of its classroom system.
In addition to hardware and software, Promethean provides professional development and training services to educators and works with publishers to develop curriculum materials for the system which is collectively marketed as the Activclassroom.
Promethean is involved in user interface research and development. A number of prototype, simultaneous, multi touch whiteboard techniques have been developed by Promethean Ltd. Many of these ideas were first exhibited at the NECC 2007 trade show in Atlanta as upgrades to their Activboard Interactive Whiteboard.
Company locations
Promethean have their Head Office in Blackburn (UK) and regional offices in Atlanta (USA), Paris (France), Essen (Germany), Hong Kong and Singapore. Promethean's main manufacturing unit is based in Shenzhen (China) and the company has major product distribution facilities in Europe and the USA.
Promethean Products Timeline
1997: PandA Software
PandA (an acronym for ‘Presentations and Annotations’) which was first released in March 1997. PandA was based loosely on the multimedia presentation application Creator .
2001: Activstudio 1.0
The first version of Activstudio was released in the UK in February 2001. This version replaced and expanded upon the features of PandA.
2001: Activote Integrated Learner Response System
Promethean integrated its Response Devices (Activote) with the Interactive Whiteboard and associated software in order to allow the teacher carry out both preprepared and ad-hoc formative assessment during the lesson itself in order to help the teacher immediately direct remedial instruction.
2004: Activprimary
The derivative application Activprimary, (similar in functionality but offering an interface aimed towards the younger learner) was released for the primary education sector in January 2004.
2006: Activboard +2 Adjustable Height Interactive Whiteboard System
A fully adjustable, integrated Interactive Whiteboard system that could be mounted on a wall. The +2 system does not require a ceiling mounted projector and instead mounts a specially designed short-throw projector on an integrated boom arm. As well as greatly reducing the disruption, time and cost of installation, the system can move up and down allowing users of all ages and sizes to reach all areas of the board. The system also greatly reduces distracting shadows.
2007: Activstudio and Activprimary 3
This software upgrade introduced many new features including the ability for a user to author activities using over 300 actions and to connect with the wider online Promethean user community to share resources and lesson ideas.
2007: Promethean Planet
Promethean Planet is a free online user community for teachers to share lesson ideas, resources and set up projects with each other. Currently over 272,645 teachers are signed up.
2007: ActivExpression Student Contribution Devices
In 2007, Promethean launched ActivExpression, that allows students to provide open ended responses and content in response to questions and tasks set by the teacher. A combination of 'hot keys' and a cell phone type keypad allow students to text their ideas to the Activboard. The teacher can then seed these contributions to the Activ Expression Interactive Whiteboard software, where the words and ideas can be linked, reorganised or ranked in order to create new content. Confidence and Agreement, self-evaluation scales are designed to enable teachers to have learners apply higher order thinking skills in their lessons and stimulate discussion about the processes of learning.
2009: ActivInspire
At the BETT education technology show in London in January 2009, Promethean released a public preview of its new software. ActivInspire represents a complete rewrite of the Promethean software codebase. Support for PC, MAC and Linux operating systems have been introduced and the company has committed to provide a version of the software free of charge to any educator regardless of the technology they use.
Awards & Recognition
Promethean's range of products and services has won multiple national and international awards:
- The Queen's Awards for Enterprise: Innovation 2003 [2]
- Activprimary won the Worlddidac award for Software Innovation in 2004 and again in 2006 [3]
- Activprimary 2 won Best Education Technology Solution for Productivity/Creativity at The Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 23rd Annual CODIE awards in 2006 [4]
- Activprimary 3.6 won the Worlddidac award for Software Innovation for the third time in 2008 [3]
- Promethean Planet, Promethean's Web 2.0 user community won the WorldDidac award in 2008 [3]
- Promethean Learning and Activstudio 3 were both finalists for Best Professional Development Solution and Best Education Technology Solution for Productivity/Creativity at The Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 23rd Annual CODIE awards in 2008 [5]
External links
References
- ^ ACTIV Board - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about ACTIV Board
- ^ Queens Award, http://www.queensawards.org.uk/business/business.html
- ^ a b c WorldDidac, http://www.worlddidac.org/
- ^ SIIA / CODIE, 2006, http://www.siia.net/
- ^ SIIA / CODIE, 2008, http://www.siia.net/