Moving away from ActiveInspire (Google Drive, ChromeOS, etc)

[legolegolego]

We are currently in the middle of a Trust-wide migration to a single Google Workspace tenant. Part of this involves phasing out legacy local servers in favor of Shared Drives and, eventually, moving teaching staff from Windows devices over to Chromebooks.
 

The biggest "hearts and minds" challenge we've hit is ActiveInspire.

 

Our teaching staff have years of legacy flipcharts built up. While we’ve suggested converting them to PDF, we’ve hit the obvious wall: interactivity. Many of these resources rely on "drag-to-reveal" elements (e.g., blocks covering answers) or specific layering that is lost in a flat conversion.

 

Has anyone successfully navigated this transition? Specifically:

 

1. Conversion: Has anyone found a tool or workflow that successfully migrates flipcharts into a web-native format while keeping basic interactivity (like the reveal/hide elements)?
    

2. Replacement: If the answer is "phase them out," what are you using as a replacement that provides that interactive "whiteboard" feel? We’ve looked at Google Slides, but the lack of native annotation/ink is a sticking point.
    

3. The Web Player: Has anyone had success with Promethean’s ClassFlow as a browser-based player for legacy .flipchart files, or is it too buggy for daily use?
    

Appreciate that "starting from scratch" might be the only true answer, but I'm looking for a bridge to help staff who are understandably anxious about losing a decade's worth of resources.
 

Thanks in advance!

[itskdog]

ClassFlow got killed off at the end of 2023. Not sure what website you found that said it was still running, but Promethean's own website doesn't have anything about it any more.

 

They then bought Explain Everything to use as their cloud solution to replace ClassFlow, but unlike ActivInspire & ClassFlow that came included with the IWBs, EE's a paid subscription, as is their new ActivSuite.

[dmj]

 

This is a blast from the past. 

Probably 10yrs ago now we moved from windows to 1:1 chromebooks and we found Promethean to have the biggest lock in factor (not because of the quality of the software!). 

As we didn't have 1:1 promethean across all departments we were able to 'upgrade' the whiteboards slowly to LCD/LED displays and use generic software - so it was a 'start from scratch' strategy one dept at a time. The biggest selling point was student access from home IIRC, and the HT insisted that was necessary so helped drive it - Classflow was Prometheans answer to help stop schools migrating IIRC. I appreciate things have moved on since then, shame the problem (promethean) still exist. 

[ConceroEdu_Matt]

Often find this with Smart Notebook or Active Inspire and the only answer I have found to reliably work, is a staggered full migration away. Set and communicate clear deadlines. The reality is often not as bad as it first seems, and there are so many reasons why a very outdated, and no longer supported piece of software shouldn't be on your network, let alone be critical to delivering lessons.

[itskdog]

16 hours ago, ConceroEdu_Matt said:

Often find this with Smart Notebook or Active Inspire and the only answer I have found to reliably work, is a staggered full migration away. Set and communicate clear deadlines. The reality is often not as bad as it first seems, and there are so many reasons why a very outdated, and no longer supported piece of software shouldn't be on your network, let alone be critical to delivering lessons.

 

Haven't used SMART Notebook, but ActivInspire is still supported (even if they haven't released an update in almost 18 months now), and licences still come included with their latest IWBs (even if they do still try to push you to their new ActivSuite instead, though I believe that's only a single user licence per IWB, rather than unlimited PCs connected to that IWB)

[BenQ_Chris]

Hi @legolegolego - not sure if this will help, but BenQ screens have EZWrite 6 built in and they open natively .notebook files and .iwb, you can export Active Inspire files as .iwb files. But even if you don't have BenQ Interactive Panels (sad times 🥲) EZWrite 6 is available FOC from Microsoft Store or the BenQ website.

 

If you'd like to know more or have any questions, please feel free to drop me a DM.

[legolegolego]

Hey 

Thank you so much for these replies.

I think the end goal here would be to ensure that there is no reliance on a particular manufacturer... and therefore exploring the routes suggested by dmj and Matt seem to make the most sense.

Cheers,

J

Edited June 16 by legolegolego

[BKGarry]

While you won't be able to open the flipchart files, canva does have a whiteboard option, and you can setup SSO with Google, to the point that when you are logged in with a chromebook, you are instantly logged into Canva with your school Google Account.