Posts made in April 25th, 2008

Magic Pen Game

Posted on Apr 25, 2008 in Games and interactives, Interactive Whiteboards | 1 comment

No, not related to my earlier post about the Smart Magic Pen, but more related to my post about Phun the other week.

Thanks to Science Punk for linking to another fun little Real Physics application called Magic Pen.

Magic Pen is like Phun in that you use a crayon to draw objects that then behave on the screen as if they were real. Balls roll, oblongs topple down under gravity etc. This time, there’s an actual objective. You need to get the little ball to the flag. You might need to just roll a ball into it to make it move, or you could build a more complex solution.

It’s very neat, and would be great on an IWB as a lesson starter activity.

Play Magic Pen here: http://magic.pen.fizzlebot.com/

The Magic Pen

Posted on Apr 25, 2008 in Interactive Whiteboards, SMARTboards, Tutorials and Guides | 0 comments

One of the small niggles I had with Smart 9 was that there was no spotlight tool on the toolbar in Smart Notebook. I know you could get it via the floating toolbar, but it annoyed me that I couldn’t get it quickly in Notebook without having to use workarounds.

So I was really happy when I was first shown a beta of Smart Notebook 10 with the tool called the Magic Pen.

The Magic Pen is brilliant.

If you write with the Magic Pen it stays on the screen for a few seconds and then fades away. This is great for adding quick annotations that you don’t want to last – underlining an area on the screen, circling a key point etc.

If you draw a circle on the screen with the Magic Pen then it automatically turns into a Spotlight tool! This is my favourite!

If you draw a rectangle on the screen it will turn into a magnifyer – making an area of the screen larger. Good for making text larger such as web addresses etc.

Here’s a quick video that shows how to use the Magic Pen. I made this with the beta but couldn’t show them due to the NDA, which is why it talks about being the second video… I can’t find part 1!!

http://www.screencast.com/t/WBCypM5Pcn0