The BETT show at Olympia in London in January is the largest education technology show on the planet and Aimer Education have been nominated for one of the key prizes.

Aimer Education have been working with Stanford Junior School in Brighton for a number of years and their submission was based on the work they have been doing to create a school-wide assessment solution.

With support from Promethean and Brighton and Hove’s LEA SIMS team they have been working to enable AIMER to be used by all the teachers to produce assessment data to support their teaching and to investigate how this data could be used for end of year pupil reports and whole school assessment.

We wish them the very best of luck!

What could be cooler than seeing your car race around a Formula One circuit - with the chance of your place on the winners podium within your grasp!

Robert Powell Publications have created a second set of applications based on the Promethean SDK.

Aimed directly at teacher’s Assessment for Learning needs, “Race to Success“, features 20,000+ questions mapped to levels 3-7 of UK Curriculum for Math & Science, an question set editor, comprehensive analysis and reporting and the kind of excitement to keep students really engaged.

Use FLASH?

We have put together a set of Actionscript 3 code that will make it easy for you to integrate the Promethean SDK with FLASH based content or develop libraries of components.

It is currently in BETA so is unsupported and you should not use it in production environments.  Get it here

If you have any questions about the FLASH Extensions for SDK - please ask them in the PDN Developer Forum

All feedback welcome… Is it doing what you need? Anything not working right?

Magic Software is a Promethean Centre of Excellence for Activsoftware Development and has invested in building capability to develop materials for interactive whiteboards. The partnership with Promethean extends Activsoftware development expertise to publishers planning to develop content directly in Promethean’s interactive flipchart™ format or for integrating Promethean interactive devices such as Activote and Activexpression Learner Response Devices using the Promethean Software Development Kit (SDK).

Specialising in eLearning content and technology services for education publishers, Magic has been in the education technology domain for 18 years. It has worked with many of the world’s leading educational publishers to create multimedia software for all levels including primary, secondary. Higher education and work place learning.  

Magic’s range of experience in the education sector includes:

·         Interactive group teaching resources for teachers using Interactive Whiteboards

·         Educational courseware for students

·         Curriculum and non-curriculum resources such as games, simulations and learning objects for students

·         Productivity tools and technology applications such as assessment systems and content management systems, and Virtual Learning Environments, that enables the teachers to perform their administrative, management and teaching tasks efficiently

·         Learning Portals and websites for teachers, students and parents

·         eLearning courses for professional development of teachers

Benefits for Publishers:

·         Access to a scalable team trained and experienced in development using Activsoftware

·         Program Managers who understand the nuances of the education publishing business

·         Consultation for optimum use of the Activsoftware range.

·         Significant cost savings in production

Several leading educational publishers access Magic’s team in India to support them in their cost effective offshore Activsoftware development plans.

To find out more about how Magic’s experience can be leveraged to meet your development requirements please use this link and leave a message and we will get back to you……………..

http://www.magicsw.com/promethean-alliance.html 

Review of Electronic Voting and an Evaluation of uses within Assessment and Learning

The REVEAL project is a two-year development and research initiative that focuses upon the effective uses of learner response systems. It began in the summer of 2006 and the findings, along with lessons, video and valuable teaching materials and case studies are available on a FREE DVD.

Led by the Midlands Leadership Centre, University of Wolverhampton, the project aims to disseminate best practice in the use of the Activote learner response technology, highlighting key uses and creative ways of working. Findings and recommendations from the project may be useful in connection with the use of any voting technology.

The project focuses on:

• evaluating the use of Promethean learner response systems within the education profession and the extent to which Activote is being used successfully in UK education establishments
• exploring effective use of this innovative technology, investigating ways of optimisting the potential of learner response systems in order to develop learning and teaching
• disseminating best practice in the use of the learner response system, highlighting key uses and creative ways of working
• developing digital resources for use with learner response systems

The DVD contains interactive whiteboard flipcharts, research documentation, video or classroom practise, a range of lessons and sample voting applications.

REVEAL project video clip

You can find out more and order your copy of the DVD at REVEAL PROJECT

Driven by clear and well studied research, this report highlights the fact that for assessment to be effective in raising standards, it needs to impact learning not just measure it.

Some of the key points it makes directly relate to the way that Promethean Learner Response System and the SDKs are designed to be used… To develop instruction where assessment happens continually, almost on a moment by moment basis.

Promethean refer to this form of pedagogy as “instructional assessment” and it is a standard feature of the Promethean Activclassroom and the way it works. It provides teachers with options not only to pre-prepare questions and decision points, but to ‘ad-hoc’ poll the class as opportunities come up to direct or refocus instruction based on knowing what each child does or does not know.

By integrating Promethean handheld response systems into software that has decision points or assessments, the whole class be polled or tested at any point in time - and the teacher (or the software itself) can adapt immediately to the needs of all the learners in the class. Of course all the data can be captured for subsequent analysis.

Read more:

Aspen Institute: The Role of Interim Assessments in a Comprehensive Assessment System: A Policy Brief

With the huge range of evidence confirming the impact on learning standards of good assessment for learning (AfL), it was no surprise to see an announcement in the UK for tens of £ Millions to be spent on developing AfL in schools over the next few years.

In the UK, the Assessment Reform Group has identified the 10 key Principles of assessment for learning that forms the foundation of the new policy and funding.

http://www.aaia.org.uk/pdf/AFL_10principlesARG.pdf (PDF)

The Promethean system has been developed specifically to provide a framework for the effective application of such principles.

The highly adaptable flipchart format allows teachers to adapt instruction ‘on the fly’ and Promethean’s range of feature rich response devices offer preset ‘confidence’ and ‘agreement’ checks as well as the leading range of ‘text’ & ‘numeric’ contribution and traditional ‘forced answer’ responses to offer the widest possible range of feedback options for developers.

From: http://www.aaia.org.uk/pdf/Assessment_for_Learning.pdf

“The research indicates that improving learning through assessment depends on five, deceptively simple, key factors:

1. the provision of effective feedback to pupils;
2. the active involvement of pupils in their own learning;
3. adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment;
   
4. a recognition of the profound influence assessment has on the motivation and self-esteem of pupils, both of which are crucial influences on learning;
5. the need for pupils to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve.
   

At the same time, several inhibiting factors were identified. Among these are:

• a tendency for teachers to assess quantity of work and presentation rather than the quality of learning;
• greater attention given to marking and grading, much of it tending to lower the self-esteem of pupils, rather than to providing advice for improvement;
• a strong emphasis on comparing pupils with each other which demoralises the less successful learners;
• teachers’ feedback to pupils often serves social and managerial purposes rather than helping them to learn more effectively;
• teachers not knowing enough about their pupils’ learning needs.”