Interfacing your AirLiner wireless slate to your Win XP computer is easier than ever before. Just download the newest Broadcom drivers from their website. Start up your Win XP computer. Insert the white Bluetooth dongle that came with your AirLiner into any USB 2.0 port. Run the drivers. Restart your computer. Open up My Bluetooth Places. Disable the old Airliner devices and "Search for Devices in Range." Installation time is about 10 minutes.
SMART Technologies publishes a monthly newsletter which usually discusses the latest in SMART Board activities and hardware. In addition, the newsletter will also have a monthly theme. September's newsletter has focus on funding for technology purchases such as SMART Boards and Senteo student response systems. To get your copy of the newsletter, click on the link below. The file is a PDF file which will open in Adobe Reader.
http://education.smarttech.com
Many teachers have seen the educational benefits of using SMART Boards to assist student learning. However, the funds needed to purchase SMART Boards for teachers are difficult for most schools and districts to find. Many teachers have started looking for grants or contests which would gives schools the funds needed to purchase them. To assist you in finding grants, use the following website created by Technology and Learning magazine: http://www.techlearning.com/resources/grants.php. It will take some time to look through all the sources of funds, but it could be very worthwhile...
Good hunting!
As school gets into session again, we're getting some great Windows XP/SMART Board support questions. Both of today's questions relate to interfacing your Windows computer to the SMART Board. In one situation, a teacher cannot get her laptop to interface with her laptop when the laptop hybernates. In the second situation, a librarian cannot get her computer to handshake with the SMART Board at all. In both situations, start up your computer, click on the START menu tab on the lower left corner of your computer and drag up to "Control Panel," select it (as shown) and let go of your mouse button. If you do not have administrator access rights to your computer, you might not be able to do these things.
Here you see some of the Control Panel icons. Were' going to talk about the Power Options and Systems icons. Double click on the "Power Options" to get to the controls to keep your computer from going to sleep or hybernating. Later on, you will double-click on the Systems icon, if you want to tweek the USB drivers. . . . . .
Here you see the Power Option properties. Just use your mouse, to turn all the pull down choices to "Never." This will allow your computer to never hybernate (as a power saving feature) so now, your comptuer will always stay connected to your board. Just this weekend, I turned the Power Saving features off on one of our office computers, because that computer was hosting some shared data on our network, and everytime that computer hybernated, noone else could access that data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sometimes your computer's USB device drivers get corrupted, and your SMART Board might not work. I always try a bunch of other things before I do this, so this is one of my "last resorts" after I uninstall and reinstall SMART Board software. Again, go to the START tab, select Control Panels, and double-click the System icon (looks like a blue computer with a brown check mark in the monitor). Click on the Hardware tab at the top of the System Properties dialog box, then click on the Device Manager button. You can create a lot of havoc here, so be careful.
This pop-up window displays all of the devices that the Windows XP operating system is controlling on your computer. Way at the bottom is the Unviersal Serial Bus (USB) controllers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Right click to highlight the first listing, which is the main USB host controller in Windows XP, then pull down to Disable it. You can keep doing that for all of the USB host controllers if you want to (the USB2 Host Controller is listed for supporting USB 2.0 devices). This seems like a scary thing to me, every time I do it, because it feels like I'm throwing away software that I'll never get again, but when you reboot your XP machine, XP OS rebuilds all the USB Host Controllers (very quickly). So, you aren't goofing anything up. The only thing to remember, is that if you have USB keyboard and mice, you will only be able to shut your machine off by pulling out AC power and plugging it back in (unless you have set your computer to reboot when you press the power button... part of the Power Management settings). So, if all else fails, and you've already UNINSTALLED and reinstalled SMART Board software, this is worth a try. Before doing this, I would hard wire a "known good" USB cable to the board, and would plug a known good computer, too, to verify that the problem isn't the cable.
The following post is for SMART Board users who cannot get their Macintosh running Parallels software to recognize the SMART Board in Windows OS. In my situation, I was able to get the SMART Board recognized while running Mac OS. However, when I switched to Windows XP using Parallels software on my MacBook Pro, Windows would not see that I had a SMART Board connected. I would go to the SMART Control Panel and the SMART Board Settings link would not see that I had connected it using the USB cable. If you have suffered through the same situation, try the following steps which I found successful on my Mac.
Launch Windows OS.
Next you need to remove Parallels Tools if present. To do this, go to the Control Panels in Windows and select Add/Remove programs. Select Parallel Tools and click on Remove.
After it finishes the removal, go to the Start menu in Windows and Turn Off Computer (it will only quit Windows.) Next quit Parallels software.
After you return to Mac OS, start up Windows again. From the Parallels menus, click on the Actions menu and select Install Parallels Tools.
After Parallels completes the installation, Turn Off Computer from within Windows and quit Parallels.
After you return to Mac OS, start up Parallels (not Windows) from the Applications menu.
Go to the Edit Menu and select Virtual Machine. On the left side of the new window, select the USB controller from the list of resources. On the right side of the window, under device status make sure Enabled is checked. Also under Connection Options, select Connect to Guest OS.
From the Action menu, start up Windows OS. After Windows is running, connect the USB cable from the SMART Board to the Mac. If the device doesn't appear automatically, you should go to Devices menu and select USB and choose it from the list.
Download SMART Technologies 22 new FREE Notebook files, bringing this curriculum collection total to 872. New titles released for the National Educational Computing Convention include several different titles in English, earth science, mathematics and social studies. Because many teachers are constantly seeking new ways to present information in Notebook, these files are always worth studying. In VowelsUS, you can zoom the page to show both the Notebook file AND the Gallery, to search through the Science/Animals gallery to find, then drag/drop and resize animals beginning in different vowels.
Several math Notebook files could be easily customized to create expanded review sessions. Here you can use the Pointer tool to click on a measurement to unlock and modify the value. The next step that I would take is to only put one volumetric shape on a page, and then link the page to the Senteo response system, so all the students in the class could better interact with this lesson (the lesson didn't do that... I'd try to modify it to meet my needs). The MeanMedianModeUS Notebook file could also be adapted in the same way.
NetsUS demonstrated an interesting answer reveal technique, with the use of drag tabs that are placed along the edge of the Notebook page and then dragged outward to reveal an answer. VolcanosUS showed use of a magnifying glass that demonstrated using text matching background colors and layering to reveal answers. InsulationUS showed an interesting labeling technique, where a house was shown on the screen, with a pull tab of a labeled house with a transparent center.
Most of these new Notebook files also incorporate Flash animations, which we haven't yet figured out how to modify to suit our needs. The English files incorporate hyperlinks, allowing you to access poetry or other learning content from the Internet.
If your school is within 25 miles of a Dollar General store, you should apply before August 10 for the Back-to-School literacy grant. With 83 stores in Wisconsin, there's probably a store near you. The maximum grant amount is $5,000 (enough to buy a SMART Board, projector, and Samsung digital document camera for presenting reading or student writing large screen and annotating over the work, or having students interactively read e-books to the entire class).
Dollar General's program is designed to assist schools in implementing new programs for their school library or literacy program. It must be used to enhance or expand the school's library, media center or literacy program. Submissions will be judged on creativity, statement of need and use of funds. The grant application is short, and you need to attach (on school letterhead) a 1/2 page executive summary, 1/2 page needs statement, 2 page (max.) program description and 1 page budget.
(Budget - SMART Board SB680 - $1399, Epson 83c projector - $749, SBA-NA Smart USB speakers - $299, FS670 floor stand - $349, Samsung 850DX document camera - $1000, projector cart - $250 and ADD your own computer and whatever software you want to use.)
In 2006, reading organizations in Fond du Lac, Madison, Milwaukee, Oshkosh and Racine received literacy grants from Dollar General, so you can too!!!
Add more video and audio playback capabilities with SMART Notebook 9.5 or higher, by adding codecs to your system. Why? Maybe you downloaded or created a video or audio file that you can't play back in Notebook or the SMART Video Player and want to use it for a classroom presentation. Maybe you have a sound file that you have been unsuccessful in linking to a Notebook object.
Windows users may like Soundforge's freeware program MediaCoder 0.3.9, which supports audio formats .aif, .aiff, .wav and video foramts .asf, .avi, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg and .wmv. Macintosh users might like ffmpegX, which supports all of those formats, plus audio .wma and video .mp4.
Here's the new title splash screen for SMART Notebook 9.7. The Windows version can be downloaded from a high speed (500kBs) cable connection in less than four minutes. Uninstall SMART Notebook 9.5 (or earlier) and install the new 9.7 software. You don't need to uninstall Essentials Educators (Gallery), if you installed it as part of SMART Board software 9.5 service pack 5. The InstallShield install makes you think you are installing over the gallery, but the Gallery does remain intact. You can update your Gallery to add some Egyptian history images.
More powerful print formatting is my favorite new 9.7 software feature, including adding header and footer information. There's also a preview window at the right, so you know exactly what your page looks like. This print feature is also used in the Senteo software, so my guess is that is was designed for better response system reporting. Senteo also has printouts for showing all test questions and for a study guide, showing all test questions plus correct answers.
Vertical type is the nicest enhancement to SMART Notebook that I could see. A new Vertical Typing Button has been added to the vertical text. The vertical text flows from the right to the left of the screen (for certain foreign languages). There is NOW Ink Aware support for Adobe Acrobat and the new 2007 releases of Microsoft Office Suite products (Word, Excel and PowerPoint). The Floating Toolbar snaps to the edge of your screen and can be rotated horizontally or vertically to maximize your workspace. Other features include improved third-party sound and video integration and greater team content accessibility for the Gallery in a network configuration. SMART Board software 9.7 also automatically installs support for a host of foreign languages (accessible from SMART Board Tools / Start Center / Control Panel / SMART Board Software Language Settings).
For further reading... New Features in SMART Board Software 9.7, SMART Board Software for Windows - Quick Reference of Features and Functions, Version 9.7, What's New in SMART Notebook 9.7.
We're trying to make www.smartchoiceav.net the best SMART Board dealer website in the world. In June, SMART will ship Senteo. Today our website will give you insight on how to best utilize Senteo with easy to understand tutorials on how to use the Senteo Wizard to quickly make quizzes, import tests you have created in Microsoft Word, quiz banks created in ExamView(TM), and much more. Our website isn't fancy, but it's content rich and gives you information you probably can't get anywhere else on the Internet.
