A look at ActivSoftware Inspire

I've written a few times to mention the forthcoming new software from Promethean, the rather unwieldly titled ActivSoftware Inspire Edition. I downloaded my trial edition from the Promethean Planet website and have finally had a chance to play with it.

You can view my video about the new software here. I can't seem to embed these files into my blog :)

Whereas with the past versions of ActivPrimary and ActivStudio, each new version was more stuff added on top of an older version, Inspire Edition is a complete rebuild. This has allowed Promethean to look at how teachers are using the software, and may be using it in the future, and build this in to the software now. In theory this should mean the software can be a little leaner and meaner. There are still a few bugs in the version I was trying out, but on the whole it seemed pretty slick - apart from when dealing with videos and flash files.

The headline news is that you now only have one version of the software to worry about. There will no longer be one product for primary and one for secondary/college. Inspire edition has two different "skins" so that you can use either the Primary or Studio workspace.

Using the Studio Workspace

Using the Primary Workspace



You can change between workspaces via the Dashboard. Click on Configure and then tick the box next to "Launch next time using....". When you restart the software it will switch to the other view.

The first real difference you'll notice is that ActivInspire has adopted the more "windowsy" feel that you could achieve in AS3 with file menus along the top of the screen. This makes it easier to use, and find the menu items you want to use. It also puts the tabs across the top for the various flipcharts you have open.

The sidebar that you used to get on the side of the flipchart has now gone. The forward and backward page icons are now on the main floating toolbar. There is now a Browser panel which floats on the side of the screen. This shows the pages in your document, but also becomes the resource browser, properties inspector, actions panel etc etc.

The other big change is to the icons that appear when you select an object on the screen. The resizing anchor points in the corners are now larger and easier to grab. Instead of having to double-click to bring up the icon panel, it appears automatically. This quickly allows you to group, ungroup, resize, change transparency etc. You can see them in this screengrab;



This is easier than the older system. A similar toolbar pops up when you select text.




Handling text is also a little easier. Firstly when writing text the formatting toolbar appears at the top of the page, similar to where you'd expect it in something like Word. Also, from a Science/Maths point of view it's nice to finally get a decent Superscript and Subscript tool. Good for formulae and SI units etc.

Adding an action to an object is now easier. Simply click on the object, go to the browser panel and select actions. You can then choose an action to add to that object - such as make the calculator appear or bring up the keyboard. You can see how this looks in the ActivPrimary skin here;



Another feature that could be interesting is the fact that it is now possible to submit your files to Promethean Planet directly from within the ActivInspire software. Simply click on File and then Submit Flipcharts to Promethean Planet. Hopefully this will encourage more people to share the flipcharts they have made and help to further develop the resources available to Promethean Planet users.



Oh, and a big hooray that we finally have an eraser that actually erases. The old, weird think that makes the ink transparent but doesn't remove it is now renamed Magic Ink. It's still there if for some reason you still want it... but finally Promethean have seen sense and brought in a decent eraser. (OK I know it's a minor thing, but it's been bugging me on training sessions for years!)

I've been pretty impressed with the software so far. The only issues have been with video and media handling. I've tried adding videos and I either just get an icon rather than have it embed - or the software crashes. Similar things have happened when adding Flash files. I've tried dragging Flash video files onto the flipchart page, and it doesn't know what to do with them.. but when I insert via the menus, they do appear on the page OK. I like to drag things onto the page in the same way I do in Smart Notebook, it's annoying ActivInspire doesn't do this. Maybe this will be fixed with the full release, I do hope so.

If you want to try the software for yourself you still have about a fortnight to do so. You can download it from here, and try it out until the end of February. The full version should be out in March.

Please take a look at my video to see the software in action.

If you want to know more you can also check out Chris Betchers great blog, and also the ActivInspire blog where they are running a blogging competition (Be quick as it closes tomorrow).

Enjoy!

Google Earth version 5

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Google Earth version 5, the brand new version of the already excellent Earth viewing tool. For those of you that have never played with it, I can highly recommend it. It's free, and you can download it here.

As an application to use on your interactive whiteboard, this really is an essential piece of software to have. Combine it with your desktop capture/camera tool and you can grab images from anywhere in the world and annotate over the top.

The obvious use would be for Geography lessons - it gives you an amazing globe at your fingertips which you can spin, zoom and see pretty much everything on Earth. The search facility lets you find a place almost instantly. You can also add weather information, radar images and recent cloud cover information. One of the new features is an ocean view where you can explore the sea floor and obtain information files about ocean life.

History teachers might want to take tours of Rome, or Athens and see where the monuments are. Many famous buildings are rendered as 3d structures. Street level view even lets you take tours of some of these areas from a visitors eye view - visit the Colosseum from the comfort your classroom!

For Science teachers I love the Sunlight feature, where you can view light/dark areas over time. Drag the slide to change the time and see how the area of light and dark moves. This is really nice for showing how we get night and day (use alongside a demo with a torch and a football/globe)

For some inspiration on how to use this feature here's an excellent idea from Tom Barretts blog. He used his Twitter network to tell his class where they were in the world. The students then had to find where they were using Google Earth and to then use the shadowed layer to find the length of the day at that point. This was a great way of making the search relevant since they were looking for places that real people had suggested.



As well as views of Earth, Google Earth also has a detailed map of Mars which can be explored, as well as a fully featured Sky mode which lets you explore the universe. Again it's fully searchable and perfect for Earth and Space or Our Place in the Universe areas of the curriculum.



Another new feature is Historical View which lets you view past images of an area, if they exist, to see what it would have looked like in the past. This works better in some areas than others and does depend on how many times that area has been photographed. For example the area where I live has been surveyed last year, and in 2005 so I can toggle between seeing how my house looked before and after I moved in ;)

You can find out more about Google Earth from the Google Earth blog. And also from Tom Barrett, here's 22 interesting ways to use Google Earth.

Here's a neat video that explains some of the new features;






Again Google Earth, like all my favourite pieces of software, is free and I strongly suggest you download it now!

Word Wall

One of the products that caught my eye at the ASE conference this weekend was something called Word Wall.

Word Wall is, in essence, a piece of presentation software for an interactive whiteboard. It allows you to make flipcharts like you would in Smart Notebook. It would be ideal for users of other IWB's such as Hitachi/Interwrite boards where the software that comes bundled with the boards is not as user friendly as the software that Smart or Promethean users gets.

The first interesting bit is that Word Wall comes with a big bank of interactive buttons and activities that make it quite easy to add fun activities for lesson starters or plenaries. These integrate really easily with the "CleverClick" voting handsets that Word Wall also sell. These handsets have a small screen and allow you to text in answers as well as simply voting a, b, c, d. They even use predictive text!

The second interesting bit is that, when you save a flipchart that you have made you get the option to share it. This means that, if you have an internet connection, a copy of your file gets added to a central online library of flipcharts. These files are then accessible to any other Word Wall user. This is a very neat idea that should mean that pretty quickly there will be a large bank of user-created content that teachers can share and download. I wonder if Smart or Promethean have seen this yet?

If you don't have a Smart or Promethean board and are in the market for a piece of software to get the best from your board (or just from your projector) then Word Wall may be something to take a look at. The handsets are also quite fun, and add a little more than just voting on answers.

If you are going to the BETT exhibition, Word Wall will be demonstrating their software and clickers at the show. Failing that you can order an evaluation copy from their website: http://wordwallweb.com

Sunflower Science

As a science teacher, I am always on the look out for great interactive resources that work well on an IWB. Today I got a newsletter from Sunflower Learning, a firm that I've known about for ages, but don't believe I've mentioned on this blog yet.

I didn't realise that Sunflower have been making one of their interactive tools available for free each month. You can only use it online, and only for the duration of the month, but it does give you a taste of what the full set of resources are like.

This month, the free resource is a demonstration of Enzyme reactions. You can view the reactants and the products and change the temperature and pH and see what happens. It's quite neat. Enzymes is available until 6th February, so you're in luck if you're teaching this topic before then. Click here to view it.

Sunflower Learning will be at the ASE conference this week, and also at BETT next week if you want to go and see more. Alternatively take a look at their website.

ArtRage

If you own a Promethean board then you might be interested to know that Promethean have teamed up with ArtRage to provide a "Promethean" version of the very cool painting package. I'm not totally sure yet how this version differs from the normal version of Artrage that's available already, but I am trying to find out.

You can download the Promethean version of Artrage here. (more on the Promethean blog)

If you don't own a Promethean board, then you can download the regular, free version of Artrage from the Artrage website here.

If you've never used ArtRage, it gives you the feeling that you are painting with real paint, as oppose to pixels. It's really easy to pick up, even my 3 year old niece had a ball producing abstract art with it! It's fun to use with a mouse, but the addition of an IWB makes for a very different painting experience!

ArtRage Starter Edition gives you 8 painting tools and lets you create, save, and print as many pictures as you like and doesn't limit their size. ArtRage 2.5 Full Edition contains four new paint tools, the ability to paint on multiple layers, metallic paint, stencils and rulers, and a long list of additional features. If you like the starter edition you can upgrade to a full version of the software for about $25.

Class Tools

I may have mentioned Classtools.net before, but I've been using it a lot recently so it's worth another mention. There are lots of handy flash tools on this site, but these two are my favourites.

Countdown Timer

This is a cute little tool that allows you to set the class a time limit for a given task, and then count down the time left with some fun background music. There are 10 tunes included, ranging from a 30 second Countdown theme tune, 57 seconds Hawaii Five-0 or a 7 minute piece of Mozart. If you want you can even upload your own mp3 file to use instead.

This was a fun alternative to the built-in Promethean and Smart timers, and would also be very useful for users of other whiteboards who don't have access to a timer in their own software.




Name Picker

There are several different ways you can use the name picker, and they don't all involve names!

This tool lets you input a list of names/text and then go to either a fruit machine or typewriter view. Names are then picked at random.

I've used it when getting students up to speak for a presentation - giving me a random way of choosing the order. I've seen this used by Ewan McIntosh at TeachMeet in the same way. Clicking the "remove" button will take the chosen name out of the list so they do not appear twice.

It could be also used with keywords or a topic heading. In typewriter mode one word at a time will appear letter by letter (and they dont get to see the other words). Students could then have to give a definition of the word, or one student with their back to the board has to guess the word from the descriptions given by other students. There's many ways this tool could be used.

This can be run in full screen mode or embedded into your blog, and you can even save this to your computer to run offline.



There are many other tools on the classtools website -including Timelines, Venn Diagrams and Fishbone diagrams. It's well worth taking some time to look at them all and see which ones could be used well in your subject/year group.

Smart Notebook 10 Released

Quick blog post as it's late as I've just been watching the season openers for Battlestar Galactica, my favourite show! But I wanted to get the following onto my blog, and will write more another time.

Anyway, The final release version of Smart Notebook 10 is now available for download!

You can download the software and any new drivers here.

Please note that the version on this page is a 30 day trial version, it looks like Smart are taking steps to stop people buying lesser whiteboards and running Smart Notebook on them. Be aware of this before upgrading version 9.7

To activate and get hold of the full version, you will need to know the serial number of your Smartboard (or other Smart product such as an Airliner slate) and visit the registration page. One serial number will do multiple installations - so you can still activate your classroom version and your home version for preparation purposes.

More information about Smart Notebook 10 when I get a chance tomorrow.

Update: Some more information, and a few new demos to watch on the new Smarttech Notebook page at: http://www.smarttech.com/notebook

Animoto Again

Now back with loads of photos from my skiing holiday last week, I thought I'd have another play with Animoto and make a full length movie. I think the end result is pretty good, and not bad for $3, especially with the exchange rate at the moment.

Promethean software version 3

I do a lot of training in schools using Promethean Activ Boards, and in nearly every case they are still using ActivPrimary 2 or ActivStudio 2. Most of these schools haven't been made aware that version 3 is available - and has been for nearly a year.

Version 3 has some new features and tweaks that make it work a little better than v2.

If you already own version 2 - you can upgrade to version 3 for free. All you need to have is your Serial number, which you can find inside the box that the Activ software came in. You can also find the serial number in the Help > About menu inside the software.

There are two different pages to go to, depending on whether you are in the UK or the US.

UK users should go here.

US users should go here.

You can enter your details at the bottom of the page, and will then be sent a link to download version 3. If this does not work, or the thought of a 600MB download is too much, you can order a CD for a small fee. On the page you will find a link to a pdf file that explains the new features of version 3.

For teachers who want to be able to check out Promethean resources on their computers, but dont want to install the full version of ActivStudio/Primary - there is a Flipchart viewer that you can download. You can get it here

The viewer is also good if you want students to be able to take home copies of the lessons you have produced on your classroom IWB. As an alternative, you can also direct them towards ActivStudio Student Edition. This is freely available for use by any student of a school or institution that owns licensed copies of Promethean Activstudio. Every one of your students may install this software to create their own flipchart presentations or open their teachers’ flipcharts.

ShooFly

One of the highlights of the BETT exhibition for me was ShooFly. This is a small independent company, their stand was tucked away upstairs at the exhibition, but I was really impressed with the quality of their resources.

They have already won several awards, and last week also received some interesting news coverage which has helped to raise the profile of the company.

A lot of companies are beginning to produce electronic resources to be used on Interactive Whiteboards. But a lot of these are either the equivalent of a powerpoint presentation or bigscreen games. Both of these have a place in the market but what ShooFly have produced is something that is much more than this.

At a basic level they produce big books or animated stories using Flash to provide the interactivity. These on their own are great and some of them, especially the secondary resource Angel Boy is amazingly atmospheric and visually brilliant.

But what you also get with ShooFly resources is a massive bank of additional material for the teacher to use. Smart Notebook and Promethean Flipchart files of the book pages as well as clipart galleries of all the images used which can be used in any application. They also come with a teachers guide and activity pack that puts the resource into a cross-curricular context with links to many other subjects.

Shoo Fly Pie | Free Downloads via kwout

They also have a website called Shoo Fly Pie which gives some free resources which you can download to use on your own whiteboards. Well worth a visit.

My particular favourite is the one that caused all the fuss in the press last week: The Three Little Cowboy Builders. I had never seen anyone attempt to make a 3D PopUp book on an IWB before, and it works brilliantly. The story is very funny too with the Three Little Pigs building their houses before the Big Bad Housing Inspector comes round.... great stuff.

Improving my range

I've very much been a Smart and Promethean person when it comes to IWB's. I have occasionally had to train users on other boards such as CleverBoards and Hitachi/Cambridge Boards. I've always found the software for those two lacking, but I have usually been on older versions since I use whatever the school have installed at the time.

Thanks to some very nice people on the Hitachi and Sahara stands at BETT I know have copies of the latest versions of Lynx (for Cleverboards) and Starboard (for Hitachi) and I hope to be able to get my head around these in the near future.

Both have come a long way since I last saw them, and I would like to be able to develop some of my existing resources into these formats since it seems there is a lack of resources out there for users of these boards.

Watch this space, but it may be a while before I get a chance to do it.

BETT was great by the way. Just got back, and getting my breath back. Going up there again tomorrow afternoon. Write more later.

Pictogram and Jing

This was my first attempt at using a piece of software called Jing to record a mini-tutorial. The software worked pretty well and was quite painless. There's not many features, it records an area you choose and you can have a microphone on or off. That's it. But it's simple enough for me. it gives you a free video hosting account with Screencast to host the video on, or you can choose to save it and host it yourself.

It also takes screenshots, and the pics in the Art Attack post below were taken and automatically uploaded to Flickr using Jing.

Anyway, the best way of getting a feel for a piece of software is to use it in anger so I've made a tutorial that shows how you can very simply set up Smart Notebook to create a pictogram using the Infinite Cloner tool. I love using the Infinite Cloner for things like arrows to label diagrams and suchlike. Every time you click on an item it will be copied over and over again. it's great to do with images of coins for shopping tasks - drag out the coins to pay for an item that costs £1.63 or whatever.

One issue with Jing is that it seems to render the video actual size. So capturing a 800x800 area still produces a 800x800 video with no options (that I can see) to scale it down. Obviously putting that size video in my blog would totally bork the layout. So I'll just link to the video for now. I don't know if I am missing an option somewhere, so I'll have a play.

Until then click here to view the video.

Smart 10 Beta released

Looks like they've finally released the Beta version of Smart Notebook 10. The placeholder download page now seems to work and I managed to download something ;)

Haven't installed it yet. As far as I know it won't run alongside Smart 9 so I will have to remove the old version. I may try it out on an older laptop first to avoid messing up my desktop.

Visit the download page here.

The Notebook software 10 beta version is available until February 29, 2008, so you have plenty of time to get hold of a copy and evaluate it. Don't forget to send your feedback to Smart via the feedback forms to help polish the final release.

If you are going to download this, please be careful. This is a beta version and so will still contain bugs and will probably crash and freeze on you. You can't install it on the same computer as your Smart 9.5 install without taking the old version off first. Files made with the new version will probably not be able to be opened with 9.5.

I would suggest you install this on a different computer to your main PC that you usually use on the SmartBoard or use for lesson preparation. Only install if you are keen to play with the new features or want to help with the testing of it. Don't expect it to be release-ready.

Art Attack

The other day James, over at Teachers Love Smart Boards, linked to a great online drawing package called Imagination Cubed. Basically its a drawing program that runs in your browser. This is great as it can be used on any brand of IWB irrespective of the software you use on your board.

I'm a scientist, not an artist but I've always enjoyed using art packages on the IWB. I used to play with packages like Painter and Photoshop. Drawing with a mouse, or even a graphics tablet, is a real pain and it is so much easier to be able to paint with my fingers! After all an IWB is only really a HUGE graphics tablet!

A quick trawl around the web led me to a few other interesting drawing packages. There are a lot of them out there covering a range of painting styles. And the best thing is they are free! I love Photoshop but it is rather pricey!

A really nice one is Brushter, which is an abstract painting package. You can choose from a wide range of brush styles and different paint effects. Autocolour chooses a different colour paint each time, which should sound annoying but actually can give a nice abstract effect. You can even click an Auto button and have Brushter generate an abstract image on its own while you watch! Here's a little something I knocked up:

Another one I quite liked is ArtPad. It's much simpler than Brushter and only gives one style of paintbrush. You can choose colours, size and opacity though. Like Imagination cubed you can replay your painting from start to finish.

Finally, there is the much simpler online Colouring-in pages at TheKidszPage.com. You can choose from a range of different line drawings to then colour in. Again this is not as powerful as the Brushter one, but foundation pupils will love colouring in the pictures with their fingers!