What I've Been Using Lately - ProPrompter

Awhile back, I wrote about a very handy web tool called CuePrompter that allowed you to type or paste text into a screen, and it would work just like a teleprompter on your computer screen, allowing the user to adjust the color, size, and speed of the text as it scrolled.  This handy tool transformed our classroom-produced videos and took us to a whole new level of "polished".

Last year, when we switched our 1:1 program to iPads, we would still use CuePrompter on the one spare laptop I had.  Students filmed with their iPads, but could still copy, paste, and read script from the laptop.  However, our laptops are getting pretty thin around these parts - the few spares we have are often in use elsewhere, and the fleet is not working too well.  But what we have coming out of our ears is iPads!  I have written before about how the iPads are posing new and interesting challenges to us to be able to find work-arounds to be able to do the same things we used to do on laptops.

The newest workaround is a great app we purchased called ProPrompter.  It works a lot like CuePrompter, but is NOT free.  ProPrompter is one of the more expensive apps we have purchased, but if you are at all like us, and create videos and multimedia frequently with your iPads, it is worth it! ProPrompter was developed by Bodelin Technologies, which is a professional teleprompter manufacturer.

ProPrompter is really simple to use.  In the Scripts menu, just push the plus button and paste in your script (one you wrote on the iPad, or one you emailed to yourself).  The settings button offers easy options for setting countdown, orientation, type of script, speed, colors, etc. It also has a handy remote feature - if someone nearby has a script in their ProPrompter app on their iPad, you can share scripts remotely.  This is handy if two students are working on a project together.

ProPrompter marks yet another successful workaround for our iPads - this time in the form of an app!