Promethean Rolls Out Interactive Whiteboards with Gesture Support
The ActivBoard 500 Pro can be configured with the 87-inch ActivBoard 587 or the 95-inch ActivBoard 595. |
Promethean, a company that offers student response systems, interactive whiteboards, an online teaching community, and other educational tools, has unveiled a new series of interactive whiteboards that support touch input from multiple users.
The new ActivBoard 500 Pro series allows students and educators to move, rotate, scale, or in some cases fling images across the the whiteboard using only their fingers. Images are resized with gestures that use one finger from each hand, while the moving of images is performed in a manner similar to drag and drop.
To aid in handwriting and annotation tasks, the ActivBoard 500 Pro series also supports the more traditional stylus for input.
The ActivBoard 500 Pro offers multiple hardware configurations and two different whiteboards: the 87-inch ActivBoard 587 and the 95-inch ActivBoard 595. Either board can be paired with a short-throw projector or ultra short throw projector and mobile, fixed, or adjustable mounting options.
To enable touch controls and animations, the new series of whiteboards use Promethean's ActivInspire Professional Edition, an application that features handwriting tools, shape recognition tools, page turn effects, and the ability to import both files and content from multiple applications including PowerPoint, Adobe, Microsoft, and Smart NoteBook.
Other features of the software include teacher profiles, time stamping, and support for both sound and screen recording.
The ActivBoard 500 Pro series ships with an ActivBoard, a projector, two student pens, two teacher pens, and mounting equipment. ActivInspire Professional Edition software must be downloaded from Promethean.
Further information is available here.
About the Author
Dan Thompson is a freelance writer based in Brea, CA. He can be reached here.