Activstudio


Activstudio is a software application designed specifically for teachers and presenters who use an Activboard Interactive Whiteboard, Promethean's interactive whiteboard. Activstudio and the derivative product Activprimary were designed and implemented by Nigel Pearce together with a software development team at Promethean.

History

Activstudio provides a suite of ‘interactive whiteboard centric’ tools. The main feature is to
allow the user to prepare and present files known as flipcharts, an electronic document that can contain a combination of vector and raster object data including lines, shapes, rich text, images, video, FLASH media and other third party document types.
The use of the term 'flipchart' in describing these electronic documents derives from the similarity in the way a physical flipchart is commonly used, effectively starting with a set of 'blank canvas' pages upon which to present. The very early versions of Activstudio had a much reduced functionality set, comprising simple pens, highlighters and page turning and hence the analogy with 'flipcharts' was born and has remained.
The flipchart also captures and stores any notes which may be written on the surface of the interactive whiteboard using an electronic pen. Additionally the program allows the user to write directly over other applications, WEB Browser content and live video clips.
On the Windows platform, Activstudio also comprises the program Activmarker. This product allows for pen annotations to be written over Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations. The subsequent markup is then automatically committed into the content of the Office document for storage.
Activstudio includes integrated tools to centrally manage additional interactive inputs including remote annotation and telepointing using wireless handheld Activslates and Activote Student Response Devices.
Activstudio incorporates many of today’s standard ‘whiteboard centric’ concepts, including the spotlight, revealer and zoom functions, a sound recorder, resource library and the interactive protractor, ruler and compass tools. A large selection of editable Restrictors, Properties and Actions that can be edited on screen through simple clicks enable the creation of interactive multimedia.
Activstudio version 3 added point and click object authoring capabilities, gesture recognition, an optional Windows style interface and integrated links to Promethean Planet via a digital dashboard.
Activprimary is virtually identical in functionality to Activstudio but is aimed at the younger learner environment, differing only in its user interface.
Other derivatives of the applications:
Activstudio and Activprimary are both available in 32 languages and for most versions of the Windows and MAC operating systems.
All authored flipcharts will work in either program and there are many freely available flipcharts uploaded to the internet. A quick search should provide a good starting point for any teacher just starting out with an Activboard.
Whilst Activstudio and Activprimary were originally designed for use on the Activboard Interactive Whiteboard, the programs can also be used with the standard computer mouse for preparation purposes and are also suitable for running with any other type of pen input device or on any other make of interactive whiteboard.

File Format

ActivStudio and ActivPrimary use a proprietary 'flipchart' format ending in the file extension '.flp'. This utilizes PKZip compression technology to reduce flipchart file sizes. This technique is also employed in other applications, such as the Microsoft PowerPoint pptx file format.
In 2009, Promethean released ActivInspire which can be used for free. This software package now uses the new 'flipchart' file format ending in the file extension '.flipchart'. ActivInspire can open the older '.flp' format but it can only save in the new '.flipchart' format. This results in ActivInspire's files from no longer being backwards compatible. In other words, Activstudio cannot open the flipcharts created by ActivInspire.
The ActivInspire 'flipchart' file uses a proprietary compression format. Accessing these files in a hex-editor you will find the file header information for this format is 'Bamboo'. One of the consequences of using a proprietary file format is that it makes it difficult for third-party software to
use
pen flipcharts.