Imagine the mix of projectors, displays, and BYOD (laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and smartphones) at play in today’s classrooms. Simply stated, it ain’t your grandfather’s classroom any longer. Now add to this confusing mashup the plethora of apps, operating systems, and platforms schools must grapple with. One recognizes very quickly that the result can become a witches’ brew of complexity and incompatibility, an unwanted concoction anywhere, let alone in schools. Enter Promethean’s new ClassFlow solution, a product designed to reduce the chaos of working in the BYOD and display mashup environment.
ClassFlow is a software solution designed to integrate visual control for the array of devices, platforms and technologies schools now use. It offers a number of chiefly visual teaching advantages for the 21st century classroom:
- Images, video, audio, or reading content becomes shareable cross-platform, cross-device.
- Student work can be shared on any display, with the whole class or peer-to-peer.
- The teacher can send learning to materials to different groups of students, based on learning style, preferences or personalized plans.
If you know this market (educational display sharing), you know that this is nothing new. Several projector, app management, and document camera companies have integrated similar offerings in their own array of products. But that’s where the rookies tire out, while the stout players come to play. ClassFlow also offers a number of heavy-lifting advanced features, including:
- A single application that is used by the teacher to create and store interactive multimedia lessons in the cloud, which is a lifesaver for the many teachers that travel to teach from different rooms (common in high schools).
- The ability to import content from various sources, including resources housed on Google Drive, DropBox, the internet, and local drives.
- A built in audience-response systems (digital clickers, if you will) for instant feedback on practice or scored assessments.
- A ClassFlow teacher app that works like a remote, allowing the teacher the freedom to roam the classroom as she/he performs her/his magic.
- Enterprise features for school systems (including aggregated usage data by student, class, lesson, and grade level; standards tracking; and integration with district SIS and management systems.
Still, I subscribe to the time-worn proverb: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” So if you would like to see a short demo of this stout software, and how it visually integrates different platforms, operating systems, and devices, check out this video:
Analyst Comment
I am overly familiar with this technology genre, and how it has played out in schools. This is perhaps the most sophisticated product I have seen in the ongoing evolution of display integration technologies. But a small warning is in order. When I look at the support community comments in the company website, it worries me. Take a look for yourself at some of the support trail comments.
The secret sauce for any product in this genre is equal parts simplicity and stability. That’s the opposite of complexity. Frankly, school customers don’t do well with complexity. Now, Promethean is one of the most mature and focused companies I know. I am sure they will stay on top of the technical environments and challenges we see in educational settings, but I surely wouldn’t underestimate the support issues accompanying such a powerful product. I always say: “respect the technology, respect the learning curve.” As you know, even the best technology is never quite that easy.
