Working in Dual User mode

This section explains Dual User mode and also the interactivity offered by this feature:

 

The concept

Promethean Technology supports true multiple user interaction and multiple operations happening at the same time. This takes the idea of multi-user to a new level. Individual users are differentiated in the Promethean system and while emulating any other multi-touch surface - it also “knows” who the teacher is and who the learners are.

The pedagogy

Promethean’s approach offers a completely new Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) paradigm – that opens a new world of easy to manage, but pedagogically advanced teaching and learning opportunities.

Benefits when used by two or more users include:

What you require

To enable Dual User mode you must ensure you have the following hardware and software:

For further information regarding Dual User hardware and software requirements please contact Promethean Ltd.

How it works

The Dual User functionality of ActivInspire is available whenever the software detects a Dual User enabled ActivBoard connected to your computer.  If this is not the case, the Dual User functionality will be unavailable within ActivInspire.

This section is written with the assumption that Dual User is enabled.

 

Dual User is designed around the concept of a Teacher Pen and a Student Pen:  

Teacher Pen

Student Pen

By default, when Dual User mode is not enabled, both the Teacher and the Student pens behave as standard single input ActivPens, in that you can use either of the pens, but only one at a time.

With either of the pens you can enable Dual User functionality as follows:

When Dual User is enabled, a second, floating Student Toolbox is displayed within ActivInspire:

Student Toolbox (ActivInspire Studio)

Student Toolbox (ActivInspire Primary)

 

When Dual User mode is enabled:

 

The Student Toolbox offers the following tools...

These allow the student to...

Select

Move and size page objects.

Pen

Annotate on the page.

Highlight

Highlight areas of the page.

Fill

Fill page objects.

Shape

Add shapes to the page.

Connector

Connect page objects.

Handwriting Recognition

Add recognized text objects to the page.

Shape Recognition

Add recognized shapes to the page.

These tools behave in much the same way as the standard tools for single pen input.

For details, see the individual sections on these tools in this Help file.

It is important to rrealize that any Student Pen activity can occur on the page independently from and simultaneously to the Teacher Pen activity.  

This therefore provides for many types of collaborative activity, including:

  • Teacher and student both writing together.

  • Teacher writing and student highlighting words.

  • Teacher writing and student selecting and moving objects.

  • Teacher and student both moving, sizing, rotating, dragging and dropping objects.

All the actions and properties of page objects such as containers and restrictors apply to both Teacher and Student Pens.

Additional ActivInspire Primary Trays

Dual User Mode within the ActivInspire Primary interface offers some additional tool trays.

When the Student Pen selects the Pen  , the Student Pen Tray is displayed in the Tray area, allowing the Student to select pens, highlighters and colors:

 

When the Student Pen selects the Fill Tool, the Student Fill Tray is displayed in the Tray area, allowing the Student to select the Fill color:

 

These trays will appear alongside any trays currently in use by the Teacher Pen.

Rules of Engagement

When working in Dual User mode, ActivInspire imposes the following rules of engagement:

Deactivating Dual User mode

When Dual User mode is enabled, you can use the Teacher Pen or the computer mouse to ‘turn off’ Dual User mode as follows:

From the Main Menu, select Tools > Dual User. Once Dual User is turned off, both pens revert to standard, single pen use (the default condition).

Content for Dual User mode

All pages support dual user input, single user input and sequential use. Multiple users will not be a prerequisite for use of pages, yet pages used in this way will be most effective due to the very nature of collaborative learning and its benefits.

The criteria for multi-user templates are as follows:

There are plenty of multi-user page templates and multi-user activities to be found within the Shared Resources Library sub-folders in:

Shared Resources > ActivInspire