THE LATEST version of a Blackburn-based company’s interactive “whiteboard” is now on sale to schools and teachers.

Promethean World’s new ActivPanel range, first previewed at this year’s Bett 2016 international education show in London, became available to order and deliver this month.

Seen as a “next generation model”, its interactive flat panel sets it apart from existing systems on the market.

Last year Promethean World, based on Blackburn’s Whitebirk Industrial Estate, was taken over by Hong Kong based NetDragon Websoft for more than £80 million.

Alistair Hayward, the firm’s business sale and development director, said: “The new Promethean ActivPanel has been completely re-imagined to function as a captivating, interactive display as well as the wirelessly accessible teaching and learning hub of the modern classroom.”

“By designing the ActivPanel with an external CPU, the new Promethean ActivPanel can be easily upgraded over time to keep pace with frequent advances in computing technology.

“However, we’ve gone way beyond looking at how we can enhance the hardware specification of the system.

“Instead, we’ve moved into the realms of how we can deliver a front-of-class display solution which integrates fully with daily teaching life and available technologies.

“The result is that the ActivPanel is no longer ‘just’ an AV peripheral – it is an intelligent piece of edtech kit that powers the classroom and acts as a hub for convergence.

“Schools have the freedom to design an ICT strategy which meets their specific needs.”

While the new ActivPanel is supplied with ActivInpire Professional Edition as standard, instant whiteboarding is made easy.

Direct from the ActivPanel, teachers can stimulate group discussions and encourage classroom collaboration, all without connecting to a computer.

Offering connectivity to third party devices and applications, the ActivPanel is designed to support the increasing trend for “bite sized” learning or “digital snacking”.

Powered by an externally accessible, upgradeable Android central processing unit (CPU), the new Promethean ActivPanel features wireless and BlueTooth connectivity, pre-loaded applications for mobile device mirroring, instant whiteboarding and free collaboration software from ClassFlow.

The new ActivPanel is available as 55in, 65in, 75in Full HD and 65in, 75in and 84in 4K interactive displays.