Smart Board Basics

Developed by Susan Yates yatess@usd290.org

Orienting: To orient your smart board, you need to press down both buttons in the middle of the pen tray at the same time. An orienting screen will appear on your smart board. You will need to click on each X that appears to get your board oriented and ready for the day. Pen Tray: The pen tray is the tray that is under the smart board and holds the pens. Remember that you can only use one pen color at a time. If you want to switch pens, you must put down the pen you were working with and pick up the new one. The eraser is also located on the pen tray. Keyboard: You can pull up a keyboard from your smart board tray. It is the left button in the center of the tray. You can use the keyboard to type in email addresses or any kind of typing you may wish to do without going back to your computer. Right Mouse Click: The button that is on the right side of the pen tray in the center is a right mouse click. If you push the button when you are in Smart, the next time you touch the screen,

a drop down menu will appear as if you had clicked the right button on your mouse. Notebook Toolbar: The toolbar contains all of the icons that go across the top or bottom of your smart board screen. Many of the tools that are on the toolbar can also be accessed in other ways. When you are looking at the toolbar from left to right, the tools are as follows: Blue Arrows: they move you within the pages of your smart lesson. You can also move within your pages with the page sorter which is a tab at the side of the page. Green Plus: this icon allows you to add a page to your smart presentation. You can also do this by using the page sorter tab at the side of the screen. When you are on a page within your presentation, you can click the drop down arrow at the upper right corner to insert a new page. You can also clone, delete, rename, and clear a page using this drop down arrow. Yellow Folder: this is to open a document that you have on your computer. Disc: this is one way to save your work. However, when you exit your smart notebook, it will ask you if you would like to save your work.

Clipboard: this can be used to paste a clipboard object into a Notebook file. Blue Arrows: these arrows can be used to undo or redo the last action you performed. Red X: this can be used to delete any selected objects. You can also do this with the drop down arrow that appears in the upper right hand corner of text or objects. Screen Shade: by using this tool you can show or hide your screen. You can move the screen up, down, or sideways to reveal a little of your notebook page at a time. If you have the screen on your notebook and would like to get rid of it, simply click on the screen shade icon in the toolbar again, and it will disappear. Full Screen: this is an icon within the toolbar that is blue and has four white arrows in each corner. It allows you to show the entire screen. For example, if you have the page sorter tab clicked so that your pages appear to the side of your notebook but you would like to view a page in full view, you just click on the full screen icon. Dual Page: this icon is called the toggle dual page mode and allows you to view more than one page at a time on your screen.

Capture: this icon looks like a camera and can be used to capture full screens, pages, or images and put them within your smart lesson. This can also be done by having your floating toolbar up on your screen. Smart Document Camera: if you have the smart document camera, this icon will activate it. Tables: this icon will allow you to create a table in your smart document. You click and drag to choose the size of your table, and it will be inserted on the page you are currently working on in your document. Mouse: this icon will allow you to select any object on your page with your mouse.

Pens/Highlighters: this is an icon with a blue pen on it. It allows you to write or draw on a Notebook page with different colored pens and highlighters. Creative Pens: this icon looks just like the pen/highlighter icon but has three lines of color at the tip of the pen. It is used to write or draw on a Notebook page with all of the creative pens. Eraser: allows you to erase pen strokes on a Notebook page but can also be done by using the eraser from the pen tray.

Drawing Lines: the icon for this is a black ray that points down. You can use this icon to draw lines within your Notebook pages. Shapes: this icon has shapes on it and can be used to add shapes to your notebook pages. Once you have added a shape to your Notebook page, you can right click on it and then click on properties to add fill and outline colors. You can also click on your shape and then click the icon within the toolbar that has two black squares in it. This will automatically pop up the fill and outline color choices for your shape. Perfect Shape: this icon is used to draw a perfect shape. If you use this tool and draw and circle, the smart software will change your circle into a perfect circle. Magic Pen: this icon is called the magic pen. If you write with this pen things will disappear after five seconds. If you circle something with this pen, it activates the spotlight. If you draw a rectangle around something, it magnifies it. Fill Bucket: this icon is used if you want to fill an object or shape with color. Text Box: This icon is used to create a text entry box for typing on a Notebook page. You can also do this by simply beginning to type anywhere on the notebook page. A text box will automatically appear.

Launching Properties: This icon is used to launch the properties side tab. Moving Toolbar to Bottom of Screen: this can be done by clicking the icon that has arrows that point up and down at the far right end of the tool bar. If you would like to move the tool bar back to the top of the screen, you just find it on the bottom of the screen and click on it again. Side Tabs: The side tabs go down the side of your notebook page. There are four tabs. They are Page Sorter, Gallery, Attachments, and Properties. If you would like to move the side tabs to the opposite side of your page, just click on the arrow that is below the Properties tab. Page Sorter: this tab shows the thumbnails of the pages within your document. You can move pages around by clicking on them and dragging them to the spot you want them to be in. On each page, there will also be a drop down arrow if you have clicked on the page. The drop down arrow will allow you to delete the page, clear the page, insert a blank page, clone the page (make an exact copy), or rename the page (change the date and time). Gallery: this tab can be a teachers best friend! It contains things that you can use when you are creating your notebook pages such as Smarts custom templates, clip art, and Flash animations to add to your notebook file. There is a section in the gallery called Essentials for Educators that contains almost anything an educator would ever use.
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There are also flash files in this section that are interactive. If you find something that you really like and think you might use often, just click on it and drag it up to My Content and then it will always be there for quick access. Attachments: this is a side tab that allows you to add attachments to other software applications. Properties: this side tab launches the properties tab. Within properties, you can access fill effects, line style, text style, object animation, and page recording. If you dont have something selected on your smart page and you click on the properties tab, all that will appear is the line style tab which allows you to change color and thickness. To access everything within the properties tab, you need to select the object or text you are trying to make changes to and then click on the properties tab. This will give you all of the options available. Menu at the Top (File, Edit, .): this menu allows you access to many of the same tools and features found on the Notebook toolbar, as well as some tools that that are not on the toolbar. For example, the Format menu will allow you to change the background color of the Notebook page you are working on.

Things You Can Do on the Smart Board: Adding text or objects: to add text to your Notebook page, click where you want the text to be and start typing. You can change the size, font, and color by highlighting what you have typed and then changing or choosing what you want before you start typing or by choosing the properties tab. Make sure you put your pen down between words that you do not want grouped together to break the connection. If you are writing on your notebook page with one of the pens from the pen tray and would like to change your writing to text, just put the pen down after you have finished writing and then click on the word. A drop down menu will appear and you can choose the correct word from the list, and it will change your writing to text. To add objects from the gallery to your notebook page, just click on the object, and it will appear on your page. You can resize the object once it is on your Notebook page. You can also add objects by capturing. Capturing: this can be used to capture images or graphics from the internet, files, or even our Everyday Math discs. To capture you can either use the floating tool bar that will appear if you click on the picture of the smart board at the bottom right side of your screen and choose floating tool bar, or you can click on the camera in the toolbar of an open notebook page. To capture: 1. Have your notebook page open and the page that you want to capture.

2. Open your capture tool (either from the toolbar or by choosing it from the floating toolbar). 3. Choose the left hand capture box if you want an area capture (this is the one that is used most of the time). 4. Once you have chosen the area capture, place the mouse at the upper left hand corner of the object you are capturing. Click and drag the mouse to the bottom right hand corner and release. 5. A message will appear on the screen that says that the image is Capturing to Notebook Software. 6. The image will appear on the page you are currently working on unless you put a check mark in the box under the capture tool that says Save to a New Page. Adding a Link: this is a way to add a link to a website to your notebook presentation. To add a link: 1. Find a website that correlates with your subject. 2. Pick a graphic from the gallery and insert it on your notebook page. 3. Click on the graphic so it has a box around it. 4. Go to Insert at the very top of the screen and drop down to insert a Link. 5. Type in the web address you are wanting to insert and choose: Launch by clicking object and not corner icon. The students will be able to go directly to the website just by clicking on the graphic. If you were to choose corner icon, the actual web address would appear on your notebook page.
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Using the Recorder: this is a way for you to record something and then have it play over and over for the students to see. For example, you can record the making of a cursive letter and then save it using the recorder. Then, when you play it, it will play the recording of the cursive letter being written over and over. I do not use the Page Recording option that is in properties because the recording is not very smooth. These are the steps I use when I am creating a recording of a cursive letter: 1. Open a page in your Notebook. 2. Choose the background you want from the Gallery. (I use the Printing Paper Large under Essentials for Educators and English and Language Arts.) 3. Pull up your floating tools from the Smart Board icon on the bottom right side of your screen. Sometimes the icon is hidden. If you dont see it, you just need to click on the arrow and more icons will appear. If you do not have the recorder on your floating toolbar, click on the three dots to customize your toolbar. The recorder can be added this way. 4. Once you have your floating tools on your blank page, you will want to expand the page to full screen using the icon on the Notebook toolbar. 5. You may have to move the floating tools so they are out of your way. 6. You are now ready to record. Pick up a pen from the pen tray and push the recorder icon. It looks like a film strip. It will pop up with a box that

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allows you to record. I also usually move that box so that it covers the floating toolbar. 7. Using the pen from the pen tray, click on the record button. It is the red circle. 8. Record what you want to record and when finished use the pen to click on the blue stop button. 9. A box will automatically pop up asking you where youd like to save your recording. Save your recording. 10.A box will then pop up that says your recording was saved successfully. Click on Okay. Your recording should be saved. Now you have a recording that can be used over and over. If you are having trouble getting it to repeat what you recorded, when you open the file that you want it to play, you can click on the Play icon at the top of the screen. Make sure that Repeat has a checkmark by it.

Using the Drop Down Arrow: Once you have text or an object on your notebook page, you can click on it and a drop down arrow will appear in the upper right hand corner. You can do several things with the drop down arrow. Here are some of the things you can do with the drop down arrow besides cutting, deleting, and copying: Clone: you can clone something (or make an exact copy of it) if you choose this in the drop down menu. For example,
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if youd like to clone a quarter, you would get a picture of a quarter from the gallery, click on the drop down arrow in the upper right hand corner, and choose clone. This will allow you to click somewhere else on the screen to make another copy of the quarter. Locking: this is something that can lock something in place so that it cannot be moved. For example, if I am creating a lesson for math and want my math boxes on the smart board, I will probably not want for them to move around when I am writing on the screen. In order to make them so they cannot move, I would click on them and then on the drop down arrow. Id then choose Locking and Lock in Place. Flip: this allows you to flip an object. You can either flip it left to right or up and down. Infinite Cloner: this works exactly like cloning does, but this allows you to keep making exact copies of whatever it is you clone. You can make multiple copies with infinite clone and only one copy with clone itself. Grouping: if you have a set of objects or text that you would like to move as a group, you just need to click and drag around the objects so that a box appears around them. They sort of look like theyve been highlighted. Then, you click on the drop down arrow that will be on one of the objects within the box and choose group. This will make it so that all of the objects you have grouped will only move together. For example, if you want to show different sets
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of coins but want each set to stay together as a group, you would group them together so that if one coin moves, they all move. If you decide you dont want them to be grouped, you follow the same steps and ungroup them. The Remote Control: the remote control has many functions on it that you may or may not use. The most important thing is the red power button. This, of course, turns the smart board on and off. Another important function on the remote control is the Freeze button. If you have something up on the smart board that your students are working on and would like to check something else on your computer such as email, you just need to press the freeze button. This will freeze whatever is currently showing on your smart board so that you can check your email without your students seeing it. Then, when you are finished, just click the Freeze button again, and the smart board page will become interactive again.

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