Promethean is offering schools the chance to ‘try before you buy’ by enabling trial copies of the new software version of the company’s ActivEngage Learner Response System to be downloaded and used free of charge from www.PrometheanPlanet.com/ActivEngage. This, says the company, will give schools the opportunity to explore the benefits of ActivEngage and learner response systems before purchasing the programme.
ActivEngage enables laptops or desktop computers to act as personal response devices, meaning schools can provide voting capability in classrooms via individual student computers instead of specific handsets.
Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland has welcomed the development of the new software application, becoming the first local authority in the UK to adopt ActivEngage. It plans to introduce the software to primary and secondary schools across the region, following an initiative to provide greater access to ICT in all 122 schools.
“It is vital that ICT is embedded into the teaching and learning process,” said John Tait, education officer for Dumfries and Galloway local authority. “Having enjoyed previous success with Promethean’s handheld voting systems, we wanted to maximise our ICT investment by providing all schools in Dumfries and Galloway with access to this assessment and opinion-gathering capability, without having to purchase additional hardware devices. ActivEngage was the perfect solution.”
Schools using ActivEngage can use the technology in a single classroom or across an entire campus. The voting interface floats over other software applications, enabling it to be deployed at any point in a lesson.
“Learner Response Systems have proved invaluable for providing teachers with flexible and exciting opportunities to engage, motivate and assess learner,” said Promethean’s head of European education strategy, Margaret Allen. “Teachers gain instant insight into students’ understanding and can use the self-paced learning mode, whereby students work through different levels of question sets, to personalise learning to the capabilities of different individuals.”
