In one of the language schools I worked for, the classrooms had Promethean whiteboards installed, running the ActivInspire software.
Despite the software being discontinued, its actually still quite popular, having been used in many traditional classrooms around the world, so there are some good resources related to it that you can find on the web.
While the ActivInspire program itself looks like Microsoft Paint or some similar software, its actually quite powerful. You can do things like record the screen, create animations and simple games, mark up or annotate web pages, and much more. Most teachers, however, don’t really use it anywhere near its capacity.
If your school uses this software, its worth doing a tutorial or two to get the most out of it. I did this tutorial with Lynda.com, but there are free tutorials like the one above on YouTube, and also a free online tutorial here.
Its worth noting that despite it being popular in classrooms, ActivInspire was superseded by Classflow, and is not going to be updated.
Here’s two bonus tips.
First, you can still download a free stand-alone version of ActiveInspire for Mac or PC that you can use to prepare your presentations and class resources on your own computer.
Finally, you can browse through presentations that other teachers have made and shared online at the Promethean website and for SMART boards (the other leading player in the industry) here. The quality of content varies significantly, but you might find something of interest, or learn a technique that you can exploit in your own presentations.
