Posts made in April 30th, 2010

Promethean ActivInspire 1.4 update

Posted on Apr 30, 2010 in Interactive Whiteboards, Promethean, Useful Links | 1 comment

Promethean have released an update to their ActivInspire software. This is version 1.4.

It doesn’t seem to be available from the Promethean Website yet, but for now you can upgrade within ActivInspire by clicking on Help and then Check for Updates.

Version 1.4 includes the following tweaks and updates:

• Page turn effects
• Multi-page select
• Pen modifiers (shapes, lines and curves)
• Self-paced export to Excel
• 5 new languages
• General perfomance upgrades

After updating, you can add the Pen Modifier tool to your toolbox by going to Edit – Profiles – Commands. Choose the Pen Modifier from the choices on the left and click add to add it to your toolbox. This will give you the same shapes you used to get by right clicking on the pen tool in ActivStudio 2/3.

Page turn effects can be controlled by going to File – Settings – Flipchart. Then select your default page turn effect and the speed can also be set under page turn duration.

Here are two guides from Promthean that cover new features:

Multipage Selector.

Page Turn Effects.

I’ve noticed that in recent updates you can no longer export flipcharts in PowerPoint format. I’ve asked Promethean a few times about this and not had a response. I don’t know why they no longer do this. Seems a shame that this is not possible. Is very handy in Smart to be able to do this to share lesson/meeting notes with students as pdf or ppt files. I’m assuming it’s because they want to encourage everyone to download the free version of ActivInspire and access the files that way.

For more information about ActivInspire, and various download options, click here.

More Etherpad clones

Posted on Apr 30, 2010 in Useful Links | 1 comment

As we head towards the May 14th deadline when Etherpad will close, it’s worthwhile keeping tabs on other sites that are hosting the open-source Etherpad code.

Two new ones to join the list are:

Type with Me : http://typewith.me

and TitanPad : http://titanpad.com/

These join other Etherpads such as Primary Pad and iEtherpad, amongst others.

A full list of other Etherpad sites can be found here: http://etherpad.org/etherpadsites.html