Voodoo

Would just like to say, we recently went to Panacea to install 5 Smartboards up here in Aberdeen. 1 height-adjustable 680i with projector boom and speakers, 2 with boom projector and speakers, and 2 with just the boards. I would totally agree with Netman's earlier comment in this thread. Panacea organised the job smoothly, and their installers (in this instance, Northern Digital Solutions) did a very neat and efficient job. They were well prepared to deal with some of our awkward situations (some of our buildings are over 250 years old...same with some of the teaching staff) and they came up with good solutions throughout.

This whole promotion just looks like a sneaky marketing ploy to me. From their website, the company running the memory4teachers promotion, RGS Media Group, are a marketing company who's remit is to promote other companies that want to sell stuff in the educational arena, rather than being a provider of educational resources to schools or LEA's themselves. As Zero Hour says...there's no such thing as a free lunch... I agree...brace for unsolicited contact, Captain!

We are moving to Smartboard from Promethean (because we've had all the worst experiences with Promethean as outlined earlier in this thread). We encourage our teaching staff to use board-independent software (such as Powerpoint, etc) but there is naturally a lot of material they've created using the board-dependent software (i.e. by using Activstudio on the Prometheans, etc). Staff are, therefore, looking for reassurances that materials they have created using the proprietary board software are transferable to the other type of board. So... Question 1 is, are the resources created on Smartboards with Smart software able to be "run" on a Promethean board? (We have already successfully tested the opposite - that our Promethean Flipcharts run ok on a Smartboard - and they all did). Question 2 is, are Promethean-created Flipcharts "editable" on a Smartboard, and vice versa? Anyone got experience of these two issues?

Does anyone have experience of, and could recommend, reliable Smartboard suppliers and installers covering areas further north, in Scotland?

First point to note folks, it's not CMIS I'm talking about, it really is SEEMIS - different spelling same pronunciation. This has been suggested as a possible system for our move away from Phoenix Gold. From what I can see it seems to be more popular in local authorities than in schools, and may be more common north of the border than south. Does anyone have any experience of this as an MIS system and say what they felt its pros and cons were?

Can I ask how your move to e1 went? We'd be very keen to hear if it is going smoothly or not, since we too are having to get away from Phoenix Gold because of IT Compliancy issues, and although we were on the early adopter scheme for e1 two years ago it literally fell by the wayside because it was not developed enough at that time for us to even evaluate.