Promethean Planet
Promethean Planet is a free online community for educators developed by Promethean Ltd. It was originally launched in September 2006 and had a major redesign for June 2008.
It currently hosts over 2,000,000 teacher accounts from 140 countries [1]
The purpose of Promethean Planet is to support teachers in using technology effectively. Teachers are encouraged to interact with each other using online tools such as forums, blogs and conferencing.
Promethean Planet Services
Services provided by Promethean Planet include:
- Lesson plan exchange including over 94,000 lesson downloads in over 22 languages
- Free image, sound and video resources mapped to national and state education standards
- Forum and Discussion areas
- Professional Development materials
- Free software downloads
- An Edublog
A Promethean Planet Apple iPhone and iPod touch application allows teachers to access and search for resources on those devices as well as access forums and video podcasts to support their professional development.
The main content that is shared on Promethean Planet are flipcharts - interactive presentations designed for use with Promethean's ActivInspire, Activstudio & Activprimary software for use on Promethean's Activboard Interactive Whiteboard. Free Viewer software enables any teacher to use the flipchart content without owning Promethean equipment.
Promethean Planet June 2008 Update
This major release delivered a new Best Practice section, spot-lighting top educational thought-leaders, and an enhanced Resources section.
New features and functionality, include:
- The option for users to preview flipchart lesson plans online
- Improved search facilities
- Events calendars
- Video teacher features with practitioners
- Activtips area, containing bite-sized professional development
Promethean Planet content in other popular online tools and services
Promethean Planet has a number of arrangements with other educational content repositories including Nettrekker and the European Schoolnet MELT portal Melt Portal Homepage, which is exploring the use of folksonomies as a method of enabling resource discovery over large, multi-language educator networks.
A large number of Promethean Planet video files and teacher guidance materials can also be found federated in iTunes, YouTube and TeacherTube.
Awards and recognition
- Promethean Planet, Promethean's Web 2.0 user community won the WorldDidac award in 2008 [2]
- Best Education Community Solution, 2011 CODiE Awards
- Best Non Traditional Education Solution, 2011 CODiE Awards