Interactive whiteboards come in many shapes and sizes and offer similar features.  While I have not worked directly with the Prometheus boards, I believe the true strength of using interactive boards actually revolves around the software used to develop the lessons teachers plan to deliver while using the boards.  When I offered “SMARTboard Savvy” workshops in my last school district my teachers were far much more interested in the software we used to develop our lessons than they were in learning how to use the board itself.  Building interactivity into a lesson requires a shift in the way we think and deliver our lessons and the software is the vehicle that helps us think about that interactivity.

Today, I downloaded and worked with the new Prometheus software called Inspire edition.  The Inspire software featured many of the same features that were included in the most recent SMARTboard software…Notebook 10 with some distinct differences.  The interactive activities included in the Prometheus software were not quite as “sleek” as the interactive activities included in the Notebook 10 software.  However, the activities were adequate and very colorfully attuned to younger students.  I also liked the templates that were included with the Inspire software. The fact that two students can “write” on the Prometheus whiteboards is also a plus when it comes to developing interactive activities.  SMARTboards only allow one user to touch the board at a time.

So far I have found a lot of common elements (don’t you love spotlights and cover ups?). I have also learned that while each software package includes an import function that will presumably allow you to import a file created with one package into another (for example Inspire will allow you to import files created for SMARTboards in Notebook 10 and vice-versa) many of the features that are unique to one package simply do not import effectively. I would suggest that you only try imports that incorporate text and images.

I will continue to explore and compare the two software packages, but I am curious is there anyone who has worked with both packages? And…what were your experiences and observations?