We have looked at different features of Promethean’s cloud based lesson creation and presentation toolkit ClassFlow in a number of postings here on the TeachNet blog over the last few years. A number of months ago, Promethean announced their intention to phase out their award winning ActivInspire software which hs been around for about eight years at this stage. They felt that it was based on a framework that wasn’t in keeping with the latest software developments and were encouraging their users to migrate from ActiveInspire to ClassFlow Desktop or their cloud based ClassFlow.com service which is free for all. ClassFlow.com can be used on other manufacturer’s hardware without infringing any software licenses. Promethean’s initial proposed timeline for this migration was that users would immediately begin to migrate to ClassFlow, downloads of ActiveInspire would cease to be available by the end of March 2018 and support for ActiveInspire would end by June 2018. To encourage migration, Promethean offered ActivInspire users to send their flipcharts to them in batches of 50 to be converted to ClassFlow Desktop (CFD)format, which they had agreed to convert as a free of charge service.
However, a large number of Promethean users were very unhappy with this proposal and communicated this back to Promethean. Users main reasons for not wanting ActivInspire to be phased out at this time can be summarised as follows:
- Many users felt there was a need at this time for ClassFlow.com, ClassFlow Desktop and ActiveInspire – each has its own strengths and benefits
- Users had invested lots of time in developing a bank of resources for lesson delivery appropriate to their own schools or classes over the last number of years
- Some users found ClassFlow very cumbersome and could not achieve things they were accustomed to when using ActiveInspire
- Many users had begun with ActivPrimary or ActivStudio, migrated to ActivInspire and were accustomed to using an interface that was suited to the age and level of their pupils
- Users felt that ActivInspire should not be phased out until such time as ClassFlow had been developed to such an extent that all of the features users were accustomed to using in ActivInspire had been included
If interested, you can read more on this on the following forum – https://community.prometheanworld.com/en/discussion/7001940/classflow-desktop-dont-phase-out-activinspire
The good news in this story is that Promethean, engaged with their end users on the community forums and listened to them. They decided to reverse their decision on ActivInspire – https://www.prometheanworld.com/news-article/we-heard-you-promethean-continues-to-support-activinspire/
In announcing their decision, Promethean acknowledgedd the following:
- Promethean received an incredible number of Flipcharts for conversion following their offer of a free conversion service which shows the amount of hard work their customers had put into developing millions of ActiveInspire lesson resources. Now that ActivInspire support will continue they are suspending the conversion service. However, they will honour their commitment to convert flipcharts already received.
- ActivInspire support will continue into the future, as new operating systems are released, Promethean will fix any performances issues that arise. However, there will not be any future enhancements to ActivInspire
- ClassFlow and ActiveInspire licences will ship with new Promethean hardware.
- Promethean are dedicated to developing ClassFlow as their next generation lesson delivery toolkit as it provides lots of opportunities for pupil engagement in the classroom.