SMART Notebook

SMART Notebook is the software that comes with your interactive whiteboard, and it is your best tool in using the SMART Board to its fullest potential. The newest version, SMART Notebook 11, has a great tutorial that demonstrates how to use its newest features. You can download the tutorial from SMART Exchange website here, however the tutorial is created in SMART Notebook itself, so you must have the software to open it.

Aside from the basic features that are already available in PowerPoint, SMART Notebook has a number of elements specifically designed to help you build activities in the program. For example, the following template is available in the Lesson Toolkit. It allows you to plug in vocabulary words and definitions, then have students match them appropriately. This is just one example - there are tons to choose from!

Another feature, new to SMART Notebook 11, is the Activity Builder. This allows students to drag pictures or words over a certain area, and it will "accept" or "reject" their choice. In the below example, kids could try dragging the apple to the "healthy eating" image, and it would disappear. If they tried to drag the candy, it would bounce back and be "rejected."

These are just a few of the templates available in SMART Notebook's resources. Other features include an interactive dice roll (good for math/logic activities), sentence builders in which you can input your own words (great for Language Arts or World Language) and a graph builder for math & science classes, just to name a few. The best way to explore them is to simply open them up and play around!