Tequipment: Blogging About SMART Boards, Resources, Lessons, Training, Games

Episode 5: One commonly overlooked feature in Notebook software is Recognize Table. With Recognize Table, users can arrange objects on a page and literally wrap a table around them. Watch as we take simple pictures and text to custom fit a table. This feature is also available with Math Tools.

With the beginning of the school year just around the corner, why not revamp some of your old morning meeting routines by using you SMART Board to facilitate circle time. Here are some lessons created by our Teq-Certified users to get your started!

Morning Routine Templates
In this group of templates, you will find all of the regular things you do every morning with your students in the lower grades. Templates include weather routines, days of the week, attendance and hot lunch, and more!

Back to School
by Jennifer Milio
This lesson is designed to introduce students to the SMART Board, introduce them to morning routines, and to assess students’ skills from kindergarten.

Back to School Routine
by Mrs. Kuchera
Welcome students back to the new school year with fun interactive activities. This file contains features that are new in SMART Notebook 10.

Great news for the new school year!  With the Jewish High Holy Days approaching immediately after Labor Day, leaving teachers a mere few days to cover an abundance of materiel, here is some news to make your lives a bit easier.  With a few simple adjustments and a minor tweak you can now type Hebrew directly into the text box of any of the activities in your Lesson Activity Tool Kit.  No more of the old “Drag and Drop” method.

First you need to check the version of Adobe Flash Player that installed on your computer.  Click here and Adobe will let you know the version that you have installed. Version 10.1 (the most up to date version) causes problems when dragging the Hebrew letter נ (nun) into the LATK activity.  If you have version 10.1 installed you will need to uninstall it.  You can download the Adobe Flash Uninstaller here. Once you have installed this version you can download and install any of the Version 10.0 Flash players here. This Minor adjustment will take care of the initial problem between Hebrew and the Flash Activities.

Now you are ready to set up your computer for easy Hebrew editing within the LATK activities.   In your control panel locate the Regional and Language Options button and follow these 4 steps.

1. Open the Administrative Tab
2. Click the change System Locale button
3. Change the setting for non-unicode fonts to Hebrew
4. Reboot Computer.

Here is a video to show all of the steps:

With these 2 adjustments I was able to edit all of the LATK flash activity templates that I tested, including the Checker Tool, without a hitch. This is a great step forward and will be a tremendous help as we create new lessons for the upcomming new year. I would like to wish everyone a Blessed, sweet and healthy year.  שנה טובה ומתוקה

As August draws to a close, it’s time to start considering professional development opportunities for the upcoming school year. We’re offering our popular certification course, SMART Boards in Today’s Classroom.

The course meets on Thursdays, from September 23 to January 6, and runs from 4:30 to 7:00 pm. The cost is $350. For additional information, see our PDF.

This course is available for P-Credits for NYC DOE teachers. There is a seperate registration process for those interested in this offering. Please consult the PDF for information on signing up for the P-Credit course.

As this year’s Teq Summer SMART Board Academy draws to a close, we’d like to say, “Thanks” to everyone who participated. We had an amazing time working with each of you, and we’re deeply grateful that you would choose to spend your summer with us.

This year, we held a total of 76 classes and had the pleasure of working with more than 1100 educators!

We had teachers representing:

• 2 countries (United States and Canada)
• 5 states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and my home state – Tennessee)
• + 700 schools
• Together we created more then 1,200 activities and close to 100 complete lessons (visit our Educator Resource Center to download lessons, participate in the Teq blog, get support and buy Teq Learning Objects from our online store).

For those of you who were unable to attend one of our summer sessions, check back here or visit our homepage for a list of classes, workshops, and Teq Certification opportunities throughout the 2010-2011 school year.

Thank you again for sharing your creativity and knowledge with us. We always learn so much from each of you. We hope that you will stay in touch with us and each other (keep expanding your PLN). In fact, feel free to contact us if you need a participants name or e-mail. We would be happy to help you make connections.

We look forward to seeing each of you throughout the school year.

Take care,
Joe Dixon Director, Professional Development and Training Service

One of the most requested features that teachers want in SMART Notebook is the ability to play sound automatically when a page is entered.

Only MP3 sounds can play within Notebook when embedded onto an object.  MP3′s can only play/pause and restart when you leave and re-enter a page. If  a teacher wanted the sound to play again, he or she would have to either wait for the sound to end or leave the page and return, then click on the object again.

Flash files (either FLV or SWF) are the only type of files that play when a page is entered.  So, if you want sound to play automatically when entering page, what kind of audio file would you like?

You guessed it, an FLV or SWF file.  The subtle difference between the two is that the FLV version has a controller bar to stop/play/rewind/fast-forward, and to drag the timer to any part of the file and the SWF does not have the controller bar. Another bonus to using Flash here is that MP3 sounds cannot be controlled, only paused.

But there are free audio converters out there that will allow you to create FLV and SWF files,  such as  Sofonica, and Format Factory.

In the two videos below, we use Format Factory to convert a sound into an FLV file and a SWF file.

Converting to an FLV

Converting to an SWF

Episode 4: Showcasing the SMART Tools Icon, TeqCast viewers will learn quick tips and engaging new features all with just a few clicks. Watch as we discuss this commonly overlooked feature.

The SMART Lesson Activity Toolkit is now available in French, Spanish and German, and the English version now works with SMART Response LE and CE interactive response systems.

To download the latest version of the toolkit, visit the SMART Notebook software page.

SMART Response™ 2010 Software and SMART Response VE Beta Available in August SMART Response 2010 assessment software and the SMART Response VE interactive response system beta will be available on the SMART Response software page the second week of August.

SMART Response 2010 software includes the following:

• eInstruction® EXAMVIEW® allows web assessment (HTML) files to be imported

• New functionality in SMART Teacher Tools enables tracking of question-level detail

• Improved export options enable customized export of results to text (CSV) files

• Preview of assessment results in pie chart lets teachers view percentages of responses that are correct, incorrect and unanswered as they are submitted

No-charge upgrade
Current SMART Response system customers can upgrade to SMART Response 2010 at no charge. The upgrade applies to the full SMART Response product line.

SMART Response VE beta included at no charge

Updating your Adobe Flash Player to version 10.1 on all versions of the Mac OS X operating system will cause SMART Notebook to stop recognizing the Flash Player! There are two solutions to this problem:

1. Upgrade your SMART Notebook to version 10.6 SP1, or
2. install an earlier version of Adobe Flash Player (like version 10.0.45.2)

Here are the instructions from SMART’s website on how to implement these solutions:

To upgrade SMART Notebook software to version 10.6 SP1

1. Go to smarttech.com/software.
2. Click Choose a product under SMART Notebook collaborative learning software, and then select SMART Notebook for Mac.
3. Click the Download button under SMART Notebook 10.6 SP1 software
4. Fill out the Download software form, and then click Start Download.
5. SMART Notebook 10.6 SP1 software downloads.

To install Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2

1. Quit any running instances of SMART Notebook software and any Internet browsers.
2. Run the Adobe Flash Player uninstaller, available from the Uninstall Flash Player page on the Adobe website.
3. Install Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2, available from the Archived Flash Player versions page on the Adobe website.