Promethean: Downloading and Using Resources From Promethean Planet

Now that you are getting more comfortable using your Promethean Board and Promethean Planet, it's time to use the many resources available to you.

(I know, those SMART board users are grumbling at me. But I'm pretty sure you could use these resources too as long as you have ActivInspire on your computer. I will put up tips for you all too, I promise!)

First, you should already have a Promethean Planet account. (If you don't, see the previous post on how to do that.)

Second, go to http://www.prometheanplanet.com. Under the navigation bar is the search bar. Put in your topic there.

The next screen will have all available resources. You can sort through them all, or you can narrow your results by using the boxes on the left. 

You can search for multiple age ranges and subjects. In the blue box on the left side, click +Add. 

Personally, when I am searching for resources I like to add many keywords and age ranges. This helps me make sure that I am getting a variety of materials that suit my specific needs rather than wading through flipcharts that are for kindergarten through high school ages. Of course, sometimes you might not find a lot of flipcharts on the topic you are looking for. Other times it is only a matter of changing your search criteria. And sometimes, there just aren't a lot of resources for that topic. It's always worth a try though. There are thousands of flipcharts to choose from. 

So, now you have entered your search criteria and are looking through the results. In order for Promethean to make more money they always put the Publisher Created Resources at the top. You can purchase these for around $3 or $4. Under that list, is the list of free resources. These flipcharts have been created and uploaded by educators around the world for anyone to use. These are the flipcharts you want to focus on. 

Under each picture of the flipchart is a description and two buttons. Preview and Download. 

If you scroll over the picture of the flipchart it will give you a bigger screen to better see the flipchart and description. (I think this is REALLY annoying. It does this wherever you move the mouse and makes it hard to get to the other useful buttons.  You've been forewarned.)

Now that you have gotten over this annoyance...

You can hit Preview and be taken to this screen:

This screen gives you a complete preview of each slide in the flipchart as well as more information in the Resource Details box. It plays an automatic slideshow of the flipchart, but for faster navigation you can click on the arrows on the side or numbers at the bottom.

If you choose this flipchart, simply hit Download and it will open up in ActivInspire.


If you want to keep this flipchart, SAVE IT NOW BEFORE YOU FORGET.


My personal preference is to skip the previewing part and just download the flipchart. I download all the ones that look good. Then I go to ActivInspire and flip through all of them. I save the ones I like. I close and do not save the ones I don't like. I personally think this is faster. But now you know how to do both.

Now it's time to actually use the resources you have downloaded. Sometimes you will find The Most Perfect Flipchart. Ever. Most of the time you will find several flipcharts with good and bad parts in each. The good news is that you can take out the parts you don't like or even combine slides from several flipcharts into your own. Once you have downloaded the flipchart to your computer, you have complete editing control. 

So let's say you downloaded a couple of flipcharts. When I am editing I always have the browsers window open. (View--->Browsers) I can see all the slides by clicking Page Browser in the browser window.

 You can change fonts, colors, or add to the interactive parts using any of the tools on the right. Just click on what you'd like to change and edit away. I'll get more into that in other tips.

For now, let's say you like a few slides in each of the flipcharts. To put them into one flipchart you can copy and paste. Just click on the slide to select it. Then right click and Copy.

Then go to the flipchart you want to put it in. Right click in the browser window and Paste. You can reorder the slides as needed.

You can also change the pictures or items in the flipchart. In this one, you could open it every day and let students take turns giving the weather report. (You could even add another slide and create a graph.) But, we don't need the weather report for the British Isles. Click on the image and Delete.

You can then add your own image, like North Carolina. I copied this from Google Images. Just right click and Paste. To upload a saved image, go to Insert---> Media and choose your image.

Remember, that even though this is a lot of information for one post, you can always refer back to it as needed. Hopefully this is a good start in the right direction. This is really just a long explanation to something that's rather easy once you get the hang of it.

Good luck!