Promethean Pens

[SteveBentley]

How do you keep your Promethean pens from walking (maliciously or absent-mindedly)?

 

Some kind of chain it to the board solution seems like the obvious answer but I'm not sure what the best way of doing that is.

 

cheers

 

Steve

[webman]

Request that teachers look after them properly, and make replacements chargable to their department. (double the cost, of course so they understand their value)

[Butuz]

Departments pay for Pens here - thus they seem, to take rather more care of them.

 

Andrew

[iatkinson]

They always break before they walk anyway, don't think i've got any originals left

[plexer]

If they break or lose them they are charged for the replacements.

 

Most teachers look after them.

 

Connecting them to the board with a chain/string seems a bit daft, needs to be quite a long piece, or I suppose a bit of elastic

 

Ben

[SteveBentley]

I guess I should probably have said that I work at a Uni rather than a school so it's a slightly different environment, both politically and the types of user!

 

The main issue is that we don't want staff to have to come to us to get the pen whenever they want to use the board, because we are often out fixing things and the office isn't always occupied. There are also evening classes when we're not around.

 

The room with the Promethean board isn't owned by a particular department, and working out who used it last isn't always easy. "Nothing to do with me, I just ran a powerpoint through it, didn't use the IWB so I didn't notice if the pen was there or not"...

 

People here tend to only be interested in kit working for the duration of their lecture. The fact that they bugger off with the remote control for the projector in their pocket which means that the next poor sod to use the room can't use it is of little concern to them. (Yes, we have fitted control panels since). We had to take the wireless mice we had out because they were consistently failing to put them back on the charging cradle after use.

 

So I need some method of leaving the pen in the room, without people needing to get a key to open a cupboard to retrieve it (because they're guaranteed to leave it open/not take the key back) but without the opportunity for staff to walk off with it or students to nick/hide it.

[webman]

Without implementing some form of electronic anti-theft devices like a lot of shops do (probably cost more than replacement pens) there aren't any other options I can think of; as at the end of the day it is just a pen.

 

Anything that physically ties the pen to a fixed piece of furniture or wall will just impede the user in delivering the lesson.

[tomscaper]

We charge i think £10 for a replacement pen, one teacher had 3 replaced in a month, if he breaks his next pen he will not be getting another.

So now he keeps very good care of his pen, i think he locks it in his draw every time he leaves the rooms fear that he wont have another.

[localzuk]

How about providing a pen to each department? Then they have to organise it between themselves?

[Sylv3r]

Luckily for us the pens don't go missing, although if they ever started to go missing or get damaged we would probably look at providing a personal pen for all staff, that way if it was to ever get damaged / get lost it would be the member of staff's fault and nobody else. Would be difficult in a university as you have said you are though.

[john]

Departments keep them in locked drawers or on there person if they only use the rooms. Some departments have a pen each so they can use any board on site with there own pen. But they all have to pay for there own pens.

[secman]

We have allocated pens to departments and they then distribute them to their satff. We do have the occaisional one go missing but most replacements are down to failures or heavy-handedness.

[ShayBellingham]

throw it away and buy a board that isnt reliant on a pen!

[FN-GM]

throw it away and buy a board that isnt reliant on a pen!

 

Yep that’s what we have, we have smartboards

 

Z

[rrichmond]

throw it away and buy a board that isnt reliant on a pen!

 

Yes..I agree 100%!

 

We have ten Promethean boards in our junior school, and if we didn't have these silly pens the students would be having their arm on the board and the cursor would go all over the place...hmmmm Ahhh.. Silly me..

 

It was a good idea after all to have the pens... Doh!

[torledo]

throw it away and buy a board that isnt reliant on a pen!

 

I was really surprised when I was told that the promethean board our senior teaching staff had ordered relied purely on the pen for input. Admittedly having played with the board briefly promethean boards are better than those from smart, but surely it wouldn't have been too difficult to have other input options, A way to switch off pen input perhaps and type directly on the board.

[educateandexcite]

The board wouldn't be nearly as durable if you could press on it with your finger to write. The reason it's so durable is because of the technology that it uses, with a hard surface. I think the trade-off is well worth it.

 

You wouldn't dump your car because you have to have a key, so why dump the best interactive whiteboard on the market because it uses a pen?

 

[rrichmond]

I suspect a;ll this "hoo haa" over the pens is due to cost. We have not had anyone loose a pen yet and we've had these boards three terms. This may be due to the fact that they are presently used by the junior school. Next year we are placing them into the middle school as well. Time will tell. (Besides..each board has an extra pen...which means we have 10 extra pens at the moment.

[elsiegee40]

Two years into our whiteboards and no pens lost yet. Each board comes with 2. One is left with the board and I have the other, just in case!

[witch]

We have had them for 3 years and lost one pen. As elsigee40, we remove one on delivery.

They do break quite often though