Smart Technologies, the world’s leading interactive whiteboard manufacturer recently released Smart Notebook Express – http://express.smarttech.com a web application that is a lightweight version of their Smart Notebook software that is bundled with their interactive whiteboard equipment for creating interactive lesson resources. In addition they have also released a downloadable version of the Smart Notebook Express software for those teachers, students and parents who wish to be able to view, edit and customise Smart Notebook files while offline.
This will allow teachers who use Smart interactive whiteboards in their own school to view, edit and customise the many resources created and shared by other teacher colleagues on the Smart Exchange website http://exchange.smarttech.com on a home pc without the necessity to have the Smart Notebook software installed at home. In addition a teacher who creates a Smart Notebook lesson resource can now share that resource with teacher colleagues in other schools who use non Smart interactive whiteboards as the Notebook Express web application can be used to view, edit and manipulate the resource. This is great news for teachers everywhere as now the lesson resources shared on the Smart Exchange website can be used effectively on all makes of interactive whiteboards. In theory, Promethean’s Active Inspire is supposed to have the facility to import Smart Notebook files, but my own experience has been that Inspire could not fully handle the Flash animations inserted into a notebook file from the Lesson Activity Toolkit. Smart Notebook Express remedies this issue.
Smart Notebook Express is platform independent – it can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux pcs.