Boardworks from the pupils use

[Guest salan]

Hi all,

Can anyone who is more familiar with boardworks tell me about the pupils using it?

We have a teacher saying that its 'rendered usless' as the interactive bit does not work for pupils.

I am not sure what she means.

As far as I know,

a) its not installed on the pupils machines (does it need to be?)

b) we don't have licenses for it to be on all machines (its on the teachers that have smartboards).

Before I go back to the teacher, I would like to understand a bit more about it.

Alan

[dhicks]

we don't have licenses for it to be on all machines (its on the teachers that have smartboards).

 

When I last looked at Boardworks, which was a little while ago now, they sold lesson materials packaged as PowerPoint files. I understood you simply needed a copy of PowerPoint to view / use them - no need for a local install, just stick them on a (read only) file area and open them from there. I understood their standard license was a site license, covering all machines in your school, but you might want to double-check your license agreement. Interactive bits were implemented by embedded Flash objects - you'll need PowerPoint and Flash on each machine. I don't know if the PowerPoint viewer supports Flash, maybe that's something to test. I'm not sure if the license covers you to put the PowerPoint files on your VLE, although I think it might, in which case pupils at home will need to have PowerPoint (or the viewer) to view the files.

 

--

David Hicks

[round2it]

What we found was the content was quite good and well set out

 

all but the drama one did not need a install so we dumped them all on a cd server or you could put on a network share.

 

you need to get a vle version for inclusion on a vle.

 

im sure they do a scorm version now

 

Good product very over priced.

 

Pupils never use this in our school.

 

It will eventually die a death just like all the other over priced lazy teaching material they seem to buy.

Edited July 7, 2010 by round2it

[Sylv3r]

It's probably the macros / embedded flash that will not run for the students.

 

Will depend what version of office you use and how strict your security settings are within. I have turned the security off for our Office 2007 software to allow macros without prompt etc.

[jsnetman]

We have them here almost for every subject, have to agree they are over priced but staff seem to like them. They are primarily for use with an interactive whiteboard so why would the pupils need access to them apart from when they interact with the the board. We shared them out to staff users only. I suppose if they don't have an IWB an argument could be put to give access to pupils.

[beeswax]

Boardworks is very popular in our school, and it does indeed come in a SCORM package, for a little extra.