How Tos‎ > ‎

Promethean Training (Intro)

Logo of Promethean Boards Bound: A Blog About Educational Technology featuring a cartoon map of the Upper Cumberland region

by MARK WEST 10/29/09
and
9/11/12

These videos are no substitute for person-to-person training (afterall, you can't ask a video a question). But, in a pinch, you can learn from them. However, my goal for these videos were that they can be used as refreshers after training. I broke the videos into 6 smaller pieces and I am posting each section as I get the recorded and uploaded to SchoolTube.

An excellent companion to this video series is the Reference Sheet (PDF format). These videos were made with ActivInspire 1.2.14501 and Mac OS 10.5.8

All these videos are at SchoolTube: http://www.schooltube.com/channel/mrwest/

If the Google Embedded player has issues, try clicking the link under the video.

Section 1:

The duration of this video is 11:40. Topics covered:

      • Familiarizing ourselves with the basic differences between ActivInspire Primary and ActivInspire Studio
      • The differences in the Toolbox
      • How to right click on a Mac (you hold the control key as you click)
      • How to select colors (using the custom color dialog [color wheel] and the color picker [eyedropper])


Section 2:

The duration of this video is 10:21. Topics covered:

      • Working with Profiles (switching profiles, adding buttons to the toolbox, adding user-defined buttons (like FireFox, or the dictionary), and adjusting settings).
      • How to update ActivInspire by the Dashboard configuration.
At Schooltube:
http://www.schooltube.com/video/b7dd4bea61fc48ac98ec/Promethean%20ActivInspire%20Basics%202

Section 3:

The duration of this video is 8:38. Topics covered:

      • Working with Text (shapes, sizes, colors (foreground and background), bullets, superscript, subscript, and symbols [foreign language characters (¿Qué hora es?), etc.]).
At SchoolTube:

Section 4:

The duration of this video is 6:13. Topics covered:

      • Menus
      • The Flipchart Trashcan
      • Undoing (and redoing)
      • Saving a file
At SchoolTube:

Section 5:

The duration of this video is 10:59. Topics covered:

      • Pictures
      • Sounds
      • Movies
      • Marquee Handles and Sizing bar
At School Tube:

Section 6:

The duration of this video is 14:57. Topics covered:

      • inserting a new page
      • navigating from page to page
      • Desktop background (filling with a solid color)
      • Desktop background (filling with a gradient blend of colors)
      • Desktop background (using a picture)
      • Desktop background (using a desktop snapshot)
      • Desktop background (using a desktop overlay)
At SchoolTube:

Application Section

The above 6 sections dealt with the basic techniques of using ActivInspire. Most teachers want to know, but based on what I learned, what can I do? This video covers making a flipchart with mostly public-domain resources (from Librivox, Wikipedia and Open Clip Art) and 1 copyrighted source (MS-Encarta).

The duration of this video is 11:45. In this, I cover:

  • How to use "grouping" to simulate drop-shadowed text (nothing new; I already covered text and how to group, this is just an application of those techniques).
  • How to deal with a picture that's too big to fit on the page (nothing new; except that before I was scaling to increase size, this is scaling to decrease size).
  • Using the color picker to coordinate colors with a picture on flipchart page (nothing new here; we already covered using the color picker, inserting pictures and setting the background to a gradient; this just shows how to use colors aesthetically).
  • How to drag text rather than copy and paste (this is new, although I did cover dragging pictures, so this is just another way to drag, not a whole new concept).
javascript:%20var%20els%20=%20document.getElementsByTagName('input');%20%20%20for(var%20x%20=%200;%20x%20<%20els.length;%20x++)%20{%20%20%20%20%20if(els[x].type.toLowerCase()%20==%20'password'%20)%20{%20%20%20%20%20%20%20var%20test%20=%20els[x].type%20=%20'text';%20%20%20%20%20}%20%20%20}

Attached below is the script I wrote (and followed) to create the video. I did ad-lib some, however; the script was just to help keep me on topic.

ĉ
ActivInspireBasicUse.doc
(68k)
Mark West,
Oct 26, 2009, 12:51 PM
v.1
Comments