Wednesday, September 7, 2011

What's New in SMART Notebook ver.10.8

SMART Notebook 10.8 was released in August, and I thought I would put some of the new features here in this blog. One of the features that I think everyone will like is the "Clear Ink from Page" option. This is a great new feature. Now, teachers don't have to erase the digital ink from one class to the next, just click on this icon: that is located on the toolbar and it will remove all digital ink from your page (as long as you haven't saved the page with the digital ink).

Another new icon is the clear page icon: This icon will clear the entire page (both digital ink, text, and objects). I really like these two options. Now I don't have to select objects and delete them, just clear the page. Of course, you would have to be certain that you really want to clear that page!

There is a SMART Exchange icon located on the toolbar now. Instead of going to the Gallery or to a web page to find SMART Exchange, just click on this icon: This will be very convenient for us to use. Once a teacher clicks on SMART Exchange, it will take them directly to the login page. Make sure you have registered for SMART Exchange so that you can download notebook lessons. Once you are in SMART Exchange, the last button on the gray bar is a Training button. If you click on this button, you go to the Training page. If you want to learn more about SMART Notebook, Response, Slate, etc. you can take the Needs Assessment and it will give you a learning path if you choose to follow it. Some of the training is free, some have a fee attached.

There have been some additions to the SMART Response also. Something that I really like is that a teacher can now create an answer key for student paced assessments. For instance, if you have a paper test, all you have to do is create an answer key, give the student's the paper test and their clickers, and the students can answer the questions at their own pace. SMART Response will then grade the test for you.

There are some more things that are new in SMART Notebook ver. 8, but I think the above are some of the best. Soon you will be able to update to SMART Notebook ver. 8 from the update menu. You will not have to uninstall your version of 10.7 before updating to version 10.8 (another good thing about this update). There will not be another major update until April, 2012.

2 comments:

Ian said...

A minor correction: the software update is called SMART Notebook version 10.8. For Microsoft Windows 7/Vista/XP computers it is now available through SMART Product Update 5.0. People who have SMART Product Update set to check for updates on a regular basis will be prompted to install it.

Ian Berg
Technical Support Specialist
SMART Technologies
http://ww.smarttech.com/tcea

Dorene Bates said...

Thank you for the correction. I appreciate it.