Promethean have been regularly updating their ClassFlow – Cloud Based Lesson Presentation and Assessment toolkit over the last twelve months or so. Every two to three months a new or updated version has been released. For users using tablet computers and the ClassFlow Student and/or the ClassFlow Teacher apps, each new version update also meant that the app version for tablet devices had to be updated. During the course of these various updates, support for the Windows RT version of the app was withdrawn and the version of the ClassFlow Student app on the Windows Store now only supports x86 and x64 processors. The ClassFlow team has listened to their users feedback on the support community as this release features a number items that users have been requesting such as the ability to share assessments with other teachers in one’s own school or generally with all users, support for including audio files (mp3 and wav) in both lessons and assessments, some changes to the feedback options in assessments and a resolution of a bug issue where some users experienced problems when trying to log in using an Office 365 account.
Version 3 was launched recently and features a completely new look and feel. Teachers can easily navigate between Instant Whiteboard, Classes and Drive. In addition there are two other buttons on the right hand side of the Top Navigation – Profile and Network (see screenshot below). The profile button gives instant access to a teacher to Edit Profile, the Support Community, Help (online) and Logout. The Network button gives users details of their Network Connection Quality and by clicking on the Support link brings up the online help resources.
When one logs in in version 3, Classes is selected by default. The new screen layout in the Version 3 interface is split into three panels. The Left Hand panel has details of the teacher’s classes and gives access to rosters, delivered lessons, delivered assessments and delivered polls. The centre panel will display recent assessments for the selected class and the right hand panel displays the three most recent lessons and assessments from your Drive. Clicking on the Instant Whiteboard icon immediately launches a new blank presenter page for a teacher to begin presenting at the front of the class. Clicking on Drive launches a new three panel interface. In the Left panel is displayed your ClassFlow Drive, ClassFlow Community, Resource Packs, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. The centre folder displays a list of all the folders and files from whatever folder is selected in the left hand panel. The Right hand panel displays a preview of whatever has been selected in the centre panel. Also available under Drive is a simple and advanced search tool to facilitate searching your ClassFlow Drive, ClassFlow Community, Resource Packs, Bing Images, YouTube Videos and Bing Web Pages.
Once a particular lesson or assessment has been selected in the Right hand panel the teacher has immediate access to either edit or play the lesson or assessment. This saves time over previous versions where one had to switch between lessons and assessments at the main menu.
The Assessment toolkit and the variety of question and answer formats included with ClassFlow which can be used with any laptop computers, netbooks, desktop pc’s and tablet computers available in the classroom to involve pupils in a lesson is still the most valuable feature of the ClassFlow toolkit for me as a teacher in delivering my lessons and assessing pupil learning.