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

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.

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.

For those users who’ve made the leap to Notebook 10.6, you’ve probably become keenly aware of the Text Tool. Every time you finish typing, you find yourself changed into a Text Tool! This is a departure from 10.5 where your cursor would remain as the Select Tool.

If you’re as bothered by having to click the Select Tool all the time, there’s a keyboard shortcut to help you out. The instructions are buried in the full-screen toolbar, but we’ll spell it out for you: Control+1. Hold down Control, and press the “1″ key. Using keyboard shortcuts can save you an immense amount of time.

We’ve been told that in the next version of Notebook, version 11, the cursor will change to the Select Tool after you finish typing.

What other keyboard shortcuts do you use to save time?

So if you are reading this blog, look up to the top section of this page.  You may see a little button that says “Forum.”  Believe it or not, Teq has had a forum for educators to check out for quite a long time.  This forum is an area for folks to share questions, comments, ideas and advice with other educators.

There are four sections of the Forum.  In the “Learning Objects” sections, teachers can share ideas and comments regarding the Teq learning objects offered in the Teq Online Store.  The “Bragging Rights” section is a great place to share success stories with others.  We love to hear about all the great things teachers are doing with their SMART Boards!

If you find that you have some general questions or comments about SMART Board or Notebook Software use, check out the “Classroom Use” section.  In the “Tech Support” section, you will find questions, comments and ideas regarding hardware.

Check out the forum! It’s really a great resource to find and share ideas!

For those early adopters out there who have updated to Windows 7, the good news is that Notebook 10.6 has full support for the new operating system. The bad news is that in order to get the SMART Board working perfectly, you need to make one small change to how Windows 7 deals with touch devices.

If you have a computer running Windows 7 and have been experiencing a problem clicking and dragging objects on the SMART Board, the following instructions will provide an answer:

1. Click Start > Control Panel > Pen and Touch

2. Click the “Panning” tab.

3. Uncheck “Turn on Single Finger Panning.”

Hope this helps! You can now enjoy your SMART Board with all the Windows 7 goodness!

Welcome back everyone. We hope you had a happy Thanksgiving!

It’s been about three months since we uploaded a bunch of NYS tests to our SMART Response section on the ERC, and there’ve been over two thousand downloads of the various files. We recently were reviewing a PowerPoint document, and realized, “Hey, where’d the SMART Response/Senteo interface go?”

After hunting around the program, we realized that it takes a bit of tinkering to get the Response menu to pop up. Fortunately, the great folks on the SMART Exchange posted a quick fix. Rather than try and take credit for what they’ve already posted, we’re just going to give you the link.

In other news, we just received our Response LE packs. They’re currently up on FAMIS, and will be shipping before New Years. If you’re not familiar with the LE concept, check out the product page. Response LE is a student response system designed for early-childhood education.  There are five buttons, each with a distinct color and unique shape.  Check back here for updates on using the LE software.

Google boasts that it has the most ‘hits’ of any website on the Internet, with billions of hits per day. While everyone is familiar with the deceptively simple search engine giant, there are many of us who don’t use its full capabilities.

In almost every search database there is a way to clarify and simplify a search in order to find precisely what a person is looking for. Additionally, since we as educators have to be more and more careful about what we expose our students to, it becomes much more important to censor out all the ‘bad stuff’ and focus in on what we need.

Below is a collection of Google words that, when used in the Google search bar at www.google.com, can narrow the search to only include information that is pertinent.

Word usage and their use in Google searches:

Source: www.googleguide.com

After posting on the Lesson Activity Toolkit (LAT) last month, we’ve had some questions about where to find the Random Word Chooser. If you can’t find it in your Gallery, an update may be required:

Random Word Chooser is within Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0 in the Gallery. If you don’t have LAT 2.0, or if your LAT 2.0 has fewer than 164 “Interactive and Multimedia Objects” you will want to update.

Here’s how to check for updates:

1. Click on the Gallery expandable side-tab.
2. To the right of the “Type Search Terms Here” field, there is a a Magnifying Glass, and there is a “Wrench (with a yellow handle). Click on the Wrench with the Yellow Handle.
3. Choose from the menu “Check for Updates.”
4. Choose LAT.
5. On the left, check the box for “All categories.”
6. Follow the onscreen directions.
7. You won’t see the changes until you QUIT and RESTART Notebook.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on a PC or a Mac, but if you’re on a Mac it will ask you for your password.

We’d like to thank David McCarroll for his quick response to this question on Facebook and for digging up an answer in the SMART Exchange.

If you use Firefox and Notebook 10, you may have noticed the SMART Notebook Extension in “Tools” > “Add-ons.”  The add-on allows you to download files with the “.notebook,” “.nbk,” or “.xbk” extensions.  Without it, your browser may convert the file to a .zip file.

Also, from the SMART Exchange: “Progressive downloading.  It adds the ability to resume where it left off should a download be canceled partially.  This important because there are often bandwidth restrictions in some schools that may cause intermittent outages especially with large files.”

The video explains why gray margins sometimes appear within SMART Notebook Software, how to avoid them, and how to get rid of them. Topics discussed include “view options,” “auto-hide,” and “extend page.”