This year I'm gonna have a SMART Board in my room and during my internship/Student teaching I had a Promethean Board. What's the difference between the two? Is it significant or will I have trouble switching?
I've used both in the past, and enjoy both, but I prefer Smart boards over Promethean. The biggest difference to me is that Smartboards are touchscreen whereas Activboards have to be used with the pen. Hint* - if you or the students have trouble using your finger, use a knuckle instead, somehow the pressure makes it work better Besides that, they're pretty similar. They both have the colors, magic pens, shape tools, backgrounds, etc... You can go to smarttech.com and download things already made (just like Promethean Planet). Also, if you have flipcharts you want to still use, you can import them into Smart Notebook. Finally, if you want to see the software and play around with it, here is a download link, and it's free for 30 days. Then if you ask your school / district, you should be able to use a key and keep it permanently. I do this so that I can make / open files at home and at school. http://smarttech.com/software
There are things you can do on Promethean that you can't on a SMART board. Promethean has far better remote control clickers than SMART does, but they also cost more. Most things are very similar with SMART and Promethean. Just expect a few less bells and whistles now that you switch to SMART.
I'm switching to SmartBoard this year from Promethean, too. I've already gotten a code and downloaded the program to my computer. I feel like it's really similar so far.
I have a SmartBoard at my current district that I started at last year, and I had one when I was student teaching. The 5 years in between I had a Promethean board. One thing that I found last year was that I had developed a bad habit of leaning up against the board. On Promethean Boards nothing happened because you need the pens to do anything, but on a SmartBoard it will either write somewhere else or move everything on the screen because of the touch screen. I had to get out of that habit quickly!
