SMART Boards

More video and audio capabilities

  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.

More on SMART Board SW 9.7

   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.

More Senteo info on www.smartchoiceav.net

  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.

Version 9.7 available NOW

  Thank goodness the Memorial Holiday weekend is here, so there's some extra free time to play with the NEW Windows and Macintosh version of SMART Board software 9.7.  So, check back in on Tuesday to learn about the new features of 9.7.  If you are going to install it this weekend, my advice is to remove the old software from your computer, restart and reinstall.  "You're going to play with 9.7 over the Memorial Holiday weekend?"  My wife says "get a life!!!"  Trust me, we have other things planned, but I have nothing better to do at 4:30 AM.

Senteo Ships

  FedEx delivered my new Senteo system this afternoon.  Opening the box, I found a nice cushioned storage case, 32 keypads with batteries and a Phillips screwdriver to install them with, a USB RF receiver, an installation software CD and a simple manual.  Plan on a half-hour to install batteries.  When you install the batteries, the handheld Senteo response units display "Welcome to Senteo" on the LCD, so you know they are powered up and work.  Remember to turn the handhelds off, by holding down for three seconds on the white power button (upper left corner of the Senteo front face).

   After uninstalling SMART Board Software 9.5, I ran the auto-install CD, which installed Senteo with SMART Notebook 9.7.  Because my Senteo shipped before the June 1 release date, SMART Board Software 9.7 was not yet on SMART's website for download, so I had to call technical support to get help getting SMART Board Software 9.7 so I had access to Start Center tools.  To register Senteo software online (so the software doesn't think you're in an evaluation mode), you also have to have the software registration key, which is printed on the SMART dealer invoice.  In the future, when customers place orders, they will need to provide a email address, so the software registration key will be emailed to them when the product ships.

  I'm looking forward to trying the content examples that SMART ships on the install CD: Ben Franklin's Achievements, Choosing the Right Word, Geography Keywords, Homophones, Light Rays, Moon Phases, Plate Tectonics, Pythagorean Theory, Wall Street Crash: Causes, Using a Ruler, and What is a Gene?  Having borrowed a beta Senteo system about a month ago, I'm also looking forward to trying out some of the content I've written in SMART Notebook, converted from Microsoft Word and ExamView XML or made in the past from eInstruction's CPS (that took some creative effort).

Notebook Viewer

SMART Technologies' Notebook Viewer has quietly arrived.  You can download it from SMART's website for Windows, Mac and Linux.  You can legally give Notebook Viewer to anyone (e.g. students) and now everyone can read and manipulate SMART Notebook files, just like Adobe Acrobat Reader works with PDF files.  Notebook Viewer (for XP) takes 16MB hard drive space and installs a shortcut on your desktop.

For fun, I put the Installshield file on a USB thumb drive and installed the application right on the USB drive (instead of installing it on a computer hard drive).  Then I took the thumb drive to a computer WITHOUT SMART Notebook or the Viewer installed on it, double clicked on the NBViewer icon in the Notebook Viewer folder I created.  Viola !!!  Notebook Viewer started right up and I opened an existing SMART Notebook file.

  Notebook Viewer does not have all the features which SMART Notebook has.  There is no Gallery tab.  Attachments and links which someone previously created in SMART Notebook can be used in Notebook Viewer, but you can't add your own if you are using Viewer.  You do have pen tools, and you can create new pages to jot notes down on.  You cannot save your work.  Because it is a VIEWER, this makes sense.

Public.Resource.Org Images

  Here are some great images for teachers and students to install in SMART Notebook:  Non-profit Public.Resource.Org posted this portrait of George Washington as part of a collection of 6,288 Smithsonian low-res images on line on May 16.  Image size is about 400x300, 300 dpi.  Compressed, the collection is 670 MB.  You can also download a 10 MB PDF Catalog of the images.  Public.Resource.Org is challenging the language the Smithsonian uses on their website regarding copyrights.  Public.Resource.Org contends that this work is covered under 17 U.S.C. 185 and that "The Smithsonian cannot own copyright in works prepared by Smithsonian employees paid by federal funds."

  The image collections encompass much of what you would see at a trip to the Smithsonian and around the Mall, including dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, oceanography photographs (tube sponge picture shown here), items of interest on a variety of Americana and Native American subjects.  Social science teachers will have a wealth of images to use from this collection.

  Much like Grace Hopper and her Univac pioneers had difficulties chasing the bugs out of hardware, it's a challenge to download this collection.  Individual images are posted at Flickr.com, but the entire collection can be downloaded (file name: negs.tar.gz) as a tarball from Public.Resource.Org website.  It took almost 2 hours to download on a high speed network connection (so I started it and then went out for a haircut).  To find a compression tool to convert the tarball zip file into a jpg package, I downloaded PowerArchiver 6.1 (powarc61.exe) started the conversion and went away from the computer for a half hour.  When finished, a folder "Processed Negatives" was created and all the images were in the folder.  Use the Catalog to reference the jpg file names.  The final images and catalog exactly fit on one CD... a pretty nice, tidy package.  Thanks Carl Malamud and Marshall T. Rose of Public.Resource.Org!!!