An experiment with the common .IWB file format in Smart/Promethean (and Easiteach)
A new feature with the latest version of ActivInspire is the ability to export your files as the Becta-driven .IWB file format. This is an interesting step for Promethean to take since previously they’ve removed the ability to move your files out of their own flipchart format – even removing the old ActivStudio/Primary feature of being able to export to PowerPoint. For teachers who don’t want to be “locked in” to one particular file format if they ever change schools, the need for a common whiteboard file format is quite important, as is the need to be able to move from one brand of whiteboard to another. You could also use this to create files for Easiteach.
There’s been discussion about the .iwb format over on this thread on Promethean Planet, with teachers asking about which features survive the export to .IWB. So I decided to run a little experiment seeing as a whiteboard trainer I am lucky enough to have both Smart Notebook and ActivInspire on my computer.
I created a simple file with many of the basic features in ActivInspire. I exported that file as the .IWB file format and then import it into Smart Notebook. To do this yourself, in ActivInspire go to File -> Export -> Becta (.iwb) and then in Smart Notebook go to File -> Import and then choose .iwb as the file type.
My first page was a basic plenary circle that I’ve used many times before. Lots of words around a simple shape. Here’s how it looked before the export as an .IWB file.
And here’s how it looked once imported into Smart Notebook.
Basically as you can see it moves all the words up into the top left hand corner and loses text formatting. With a little work it would be pretty quick to move everything back into place.
Here’s the same file imported into RM Easiteach:
The next page I tried used lots of the simple features that I would often use in an ActivInspire flipchart. I grouped some shapes with text, added a text hyperlink, attached a sound to a shape.
The page in Inspire looked like this:
And in Smart Notebook looked like this:
Most of the features transferred OK, again the text needs to be rearranged and restored to its original positions. The red circle still had the hyperlink to a sound file. And once I’d retrieved it from the top left corner the text with a hyperlink to the BBC website worked fine. Images and clipart pictures moved across fine. And the yellow background was kept intact.
The Drag a Copy/Infinite Cloner feature of the yellow arrow had been lost. The biggest problem was the grouped shape with text, which became this:
The shapes and text were still grouped together, but the text had been moved a long way away from the original shape. Again with a quick ungroup and regroup it could be fixed.
Here’s the same page imported into easiteach:
In Easiteach the infinite cloner works, but the hyperlinks to sounds and web pages are lost. Grouped object works fine though.
I then tried a page with some shapes and a grid background. Not surprisingly the grid was lost on the transfer, although the curve was kept.
But a page with a background image from the Promethean Resource library kept its background when transferring.The page below looked identical in both versions.
So I decided to try something more complicated, but still using basic shapes. Here’s one of the pages from my 5 Lesson Start ideas files. The page uses a graduated blue and yellow rectangle as a background, locked in place, then several pieces of clip art with a line and a shape grouped together hidden behind a clip art boy.
This file, once exported and imported becomes this :
Basically quite a mess. Again, it’s fixable, but you’ll need to invest a little time in ungrouping, rearranging, regrouping and resizing everything on the page.
The other pages in the file were affected in the same way. All would need work to become useable again, but not insurmountable.
I also tried importing into RM Easiteach – the files did look a lot better. Here’s the same page for comparison:
Which suggests that maybe the text issues is more a problem with the Smart Import than the file format.
So from what you can see, although the possibility is there to now export files from Promethean into Smart (or Easiteach) via the .iwb file format, the format itself is very limiting. You can have shape, text, hyperlinks and grouping. But more advanced features will not survive the move. I haven’t even attempted to try some of the page actions that you will find in Promethean, they just won’t move across as they’re Inspire-specific. Also if you are doing this be prepared to have to rearrange every single piece of text. I do wonder if it’s almost quicker to build the files again from scratch.
With the demise of BECTA I doubt there is any drive to work on the .IWB file format and make it a more robust standard. At least being able to remove the need for rebuilding would be useful. Hopefully someone will pick up the project.
If you’ve had any more luck with a similar experiment – or have any other questions, please let me know in the comments below!
Update 1 – you can also get a IWB file Board Viewer applet via this site.
Update 2 – I have since tried this with Mimio v8. Mimio doesn’t handle the .iwb files very well – they end up looking very similar to they did in smart Notebook, which was not very good. But I was impressed to see that Mimio Studio opens Smart .notebook and ActivInspire .flipchart files really well. This is quite impressive – but you will need a mimio device to unlock the software – I don’t know if you can purchase a licence for the software separately. Can anyone advise?
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ICT Reviews for Schools – Whiteboard Guide
You may not know this but PC Pro magazine produces an occasional supplement for education called ICT Reviews for Schools. The free guide is packed with buyer’s guides, reviews and features to help schools spend their IT budgets wisely.
Issue 4 is just out, and this time features a very interesting article written by Terry Freedman entitled “Getting the most from your interactive whiteboard”.
The guide also includes head to head reviews of a Promethean and Smart whiteboard as well as a great guide to 10 free online tools.
It’s well worth a look. It’s a free download, and you can get hold of a copy here.
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Smart Notebook 11 announced
SMART have announced that the new version of Smart Notebook – version 11, will be released in the Spring. No exact date is given yet.
Headline features appears to be the ability to embed online content into your notebook files, an activity builder, and new tools such as the customisable creative pen, the crayon, and an updated table tool. I also like the sound of the embedded audio tool – easily record and add your own audio into a page.
Being able to add webpages and content such as YouTube videos etc sounds very interesting.
The full list of new features includes:
Embedded web browser: Insert web browsers directly onto a SMART Notebook software page and use tools to draw and write over web pages and drag and drop images into your lesson. You can also open the live page directly from within the lesson.
Activity builder: Create activities where objects react to actions by accepting or rejecting other objects or by triggering animations or sound. The activity builder is great for arranging, sorting and labeling and for creating VENN diagrams.
Enhanced contextual toolbar: Choose an object and the toolbar changes, so all the tools you need are right in front of you.
Crayon: Create authentic crayon drawings on a SMART Board interactive whiteboard.
Customized creative pen: Build your own creative pen using any image you choose.
Audio recording: Record sounds directly into your SMART Notebook lesson.
Shape image fill: Adjust the size of an image to fit into a shape.
Reset page: Use this feature to return your page to its last saved state.
New gestures: Shake objects to group and ungroup them.
Updated tables: Scale, move and interact with tables more easily.
New text engine: Provides improved text formatting and consistency within SMART Notebook.
Fade ink: Fade any regular ink.
There’s also going to be a SDK (software development kit) made available for developers to create their own widgets and applications. More here.
Some of these new features sound great – and would be great additions to an already good product.
I’m off to the BETT show tomorrow, so I am assuming that this will be being demonstrated on the SMART stands. If I find out any more, and get a chance to play with it, I’ll be sure to share what I find out on the blog here. Watch this space.
You can find out more here : http://smarttech.com/notebook11
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Triptico – an essential interactive whiteboard resource for teachers
I have written about Triptico a few years ago, but it’s worth mentioning again since the site, and their resources, has had quite a revamp since then. Triptico has changed from being a website of online resources to a downloadable application which runs locally. Triptico uses the Adobe Air platform, so as long as your school network allows you to install it then you’ll have no problems. You might need to have a word with your technician just in case….
The Triptico resource application currently contains 20 different interactive resources – all of which are easy to edit, adapt, save and share. You can access them all with one simple download… everything is completely free – and you will receive updates whenever new resources are added!
There are some great resources that teachers will find useful for their interactive whiteboard. Each one can be customised and saved – ready to use whenever you need it.
Here are just a few:
Word Magnets has lots of different uses. You can create drag and drop sentences, adding adjectives to create “better” sentences. Or create a quick Fridge Magnet Poetry activity.
Find 10 asks the students to select the 10 correct items from a grid of 15 different things. The grid can be customised with your own items. Would make a fun lesson starter activity.
There are countdown timers, student name pickers, Image and word spinners. There is even a resource you can use when running a class quiz – keeping track of each team’s score.
You can view a screencast of the various Triptico resources here.
David Riley at Triptico has done a fantastic job in creating all these resources. And the fact that they are free is even more impressive. For the latest updates to Triptico then it is well worth following David on Twitter or go take a look at his blog.
I definitely think that Triptico is an essential download for anyone who has an interactive whiteboard, whatever brand you have. You can download your free version of Triptico here : http://www.triptico.co.uk/
Thanks to Jose Picardo, who reminded me about Triptico via his blog.
What do you think of Triptico? Let me know via the comments…
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Interactive Whiteboard Training from Think Bank
A short commecial plug. I’ve mentioned before that I am a freelance interactive whiteboard trainer – I specialise in the main on delivering training in Interactive Whiteboards (Smart/Promethean) and also on Science training for teachers and student teachers. As an interactive whiteboard trainer I regularly deliver bespoke training sessions on how to use interactive whiteboards in schools and colleges around the UK plus overseas. I’ve also deliver courses for Military and Corporate customers.
One of the things I really enjoy doing is going into universities to deliver introductory whiteboard sessions to PGCE students studying to be teachers. Institutions where I have delivered this kind of training include Kings College London and Anglia Ruskin University.
So if you are in need of interactive whiteboard training, then please get in touch.
I am an accredited Smart Masters trainer for SMART Notebook v10 and SMART meeting Pro. I am also happy to deliver training on Promethean boards – for ActivInspire, ActivPrimary and/or ActivStudio. I can also offer training on voting systems such as Smart Response, ActiVote/ActivExpression and Turning Point and also on Visualisers and their use in the classroom.
In addition I also run non-whiteboard sessions, such as blogging, podcasting, animation, digital storytelling and web 2.0 technologies. With my science hat on I can also run sessions looking in general at the use of ICT in Science, or a particular focus on datalogging.
You can find find out more on the Courses page, or check out the Think Bank website.
Here are some quotes from a recent Interactive Whiteboard training day:
“Fantastic – I learnt more today than on my PGCE”
“An extremely useful and enjoyable day”
“Very Impressed. Possibly the best course I’ve ever attended”
“Lots of really great ideas. New skills learned, others revised. Lots of thinking about application. Great”
“A great beginning to my interactive adventure”
If your school or college is in need of training, then please get in touch and we can discuss options. Get in touch via the contact form here.
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Get the Whiteboard Blog in a handy book format
“The Best of the Whiteboard Blog” contains the very best articles from over three years of this blog collated and put together into one handy document. Running to over 200 A4 pages it is chock full of ideas and useful links to help you to make the best use of your interactive whiteboard.
As well as interactive whiteboards it also covers other educational technologies that would be of interest to teachers such as digital storytelling and other “web 2.0” tools.
You can obtain an ebook version, or an A4 printed version.
Buy The Best of The Whiteboard Blog here. (electronic book / printed version)
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Check your Interactive Whiteboard Gallery
One of the issues that I find when I go into schools to deliver Smart or Promethean whiteboard training is that quite often the software on teachers computers is not installed completely. The software will work fine, but the bank of resources that’s comes as part of the install is often missing.
This is a real shame as, on both Smart and Promethean boards, the gallery contains loads of very useful images and interactive resources that can add additional impact to your lesson resources.
I find that it’s an unknown unknown situation – most teachers don’t know the resource library should be there – so they don’t know what they are missing out on. And often when it’s installed the technicians don’t know to install it either. So it’s only when a whiteboard trainer comes in that they can see what they’re missing.
So, if you are a Smart or Promethean user, here’s what to look out for.
Smart Notebook 10
In Smart Notebook, click on the 2nd tab on the side of the screen – it looks like a picture frame – to open the gallery. You should hopefully have a folder called Gallery Essentials. It might, in earlier installs, be called Essentials for Educators. Click on the plus to the side of the folder to open it up and see the subfolders.
You should also have a second folder called Lesson Activity Toolkit. This contains lots of different interactive resources which can be used to build simple interactive activities such as sorting, labelling and hangman games.
A cut down gallery is normally always installed – this is the Gallery Sampler. It contains a small fraction of some of the resources of the rest of the gallery.
If the gallery essentials is not there – you can try and install it yourself by doing a “Check for updates” from the help menu – but this may not always work on a school install where the admins have locked things down.
I’d suggest you point your network technicians to the Administrator Downloads page where they can download the Gallery Essentials and Lesson Activity Toolkit as zip files and install them sitewide.
Promethean ActivInspire – Studio View
In ActivInspire the resources are known as Shared Resources. In Studio view it can be found on the Resource Browser on the side of the screen – click on the image of the clapperboard/musical note and then the image of the multiple heads. If you can’t seen the browser, then make it appear by going to View and then Browsers.
Click on the plus to open up each category – the bulk of the clip art and subject resources should be found in a folder called Subjects. You might also want to look in Grids for various graph papers.
If the subject resources are not here you should be able to download the Resources file via Promethean Planet here.
ActivInspire – Primary View
In ActivInspire Primary mode the resources are slightly different to Studio mode. You can open it by clicking on the clapperboard/musical note icon from the toolbar on the right hand side of the screen.
The Resource Gallery will open at the bottom of the screen. You might not see anything in there yet. In the bottom right of the screen you should see a yellow button with a triangle on it. Click that to open up the index of resources. The button with several heads on it should open the shared resources. Like the studio mode the subject resources should be there under Subjects.
If the subject resources are not here you should be able to download the Resources file via Promethean Planet here.
So that’s it – do check your gallery is installed. And if it isn’t have a word with the network technician about getting it installed. Send them a link to this page.
Good luck!
Don’t forget, for Promethean training check out my Think Bank website.
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Back to School : Got a new interactive whiteboard?
So it’s mid-August and for many teachers the new school year has begun and for others it’s not too far away. Some of you will be starting at new schools and with that there’s a chance that you’ll be coming to terms with a new interactive whiteboard. You may already be familiar with whiteboards already, and are just starting at a school with a different brand.
Either way, here’s a summary of blogposts I’ve written in the past that hopefully will prove useful to you.
Photo Credit : Library Cart by Sweetjessie
For those changing whiteboard brands.
First of all, if you are moving to a new school with a different whiteboard, here’s a guide to moving between Smart and Promethean and vice versa
General IWB Ideas
Here are 8 ideas to keep it Simple when getting to grips with your interactive whiteboard. Stick to the basic tools and use them well.
In addition here are some Lesson Starter Ideas which are simple to make, yet very effective.
Also here’s a simple guide on the Creative use of colour in IWB files.
For some ideas of websites to use on your IWB take a look at 20 Interactive Whiteboard Resources for Teachers and 10 More Cool Teaching Resources for Your Whiteboard.
If you want to add more oomph to your presentations, check out Powerful Images to Give Lessons Punch and 12 Useful Image Search Tools.
If you want some ready-made IWB files you can find some here on my Think Bank website.
New SmartBoard Users
Getting hold of a copy of Smart Notebook. Download the latest version here. It will run as a 30 day trial version until you activate it.
How to activate your copy of Smart Notebook and What to do when the network technician says you can’t have a licence key.
Smartboard software guides are in the Guides section of this website, and all my Smart articles are here.
Do check that you have the Gallery installed. Click on the icon of a Picture on the side of Smart Notebook. You are looking for “Gallery Essentials” or “Essentials for Educators”
Get more resources from Smart over at the Smart Exchange.
New Promethean ActivInspire Users
To get hold of a copy of ActivInpsire : Download here. You will need a serial number from your ICT technician to make this copy work at home. Otherwise it will run as a trial version and then as a cut down personal version.
Promethean software guides are in the Guides section of this website, and all my Promethean articles are here.
Get more resources from Promethean over at Promethean Planet.
To everyone starting back at school – I hope the new term starts smoothly for you. Any whiteboard questions please get in touch. And if your school need any Smartboard or Promethean INSET sessions run then please let me know. I can do bespoke courses for any level of user. More of that over at my Think Bank website.
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My problem with SMART’s mixed reality concept
With Notebook 10.8 SMART added Mixed Reality into the mix. This was something they’d been showing off since BETT back in January and I was really excited by the idea of adding 3D objects to my notebook pages. 8 months later and it’s finally here and I’m less excited. This post aims to expand on a comment I made to a friend who works at SMART about my problem with Mixed Reality.
First the good – I like the idea that you can put 3D objects into SMART notebook. There’s a large library of Google Sketchup objects and it would be great to be able to include these in a presentation. To have a moveable model of the Earth, or a historical building. I can see the benefits. I like the idea of being able to access these within Notebook without having to switch to another application.
So that’s great. The problem is that unless you have bought a SMART document camera – you won’t have access to this feature past the initial trial period that you get when installing Notebook 10.8.
SMART have called this “mixed reality”. They’ve seen the various augmented reality applications out there (for a good example, see this) and have tried to make something of their own that captures this.
But they haven’t. What they have done is set up a system where you control the 3D object via the document camera using a printed cube with different patterns on each face. Moving the cube will make the 3D object move about.
So here’s my problem with this.
Firstly – SMART have invented and pioneered the massive interactive touch screen. It’s rather a good invention. It puts the 3D model directly at your fingertips. A teacher or student can touch the screen and rotate the model as if it was real – it moves with their hands. With multitouch they could even make it bigger or smaller as they could on an iPhone. The model is right in front of them and interacting with it is pretty intuitive.
That’s not the case with a document camera. In most classrooms the document camera will not be positioned right in front of the board – it will probably be off to one side somewhere. Immediately there’s a disconnect between the 3D model and the person trying to interact with it. Is moving a cube about the best way of making the 3D object move?
This is the problem with a lot of Augmented Reality applications when shown on an IWB. They often work best on a computer with a webcam directly above the screen, or even better on a Smartphone or iPad.
Maybe I am being harsh? The mixed reality will open up more SMART-created content that uses the camera. But at present I haven’t seen any evidence for that – just lots of 3D models.
The ability to drop 3D models into SMART notebook is great. But I don’t like the fact that this facility will be locked away from all the teachers that will not have bought a SMART-branded document camera. I can see why SMART is doing this – to try and sell more document cameras. But it has has nothing to do with any special feature of their camera. I don’t think this is a great enough application to make you want to buy a document camera. I’ll stick with a third party application to access them. So why penalise your massive userbase who have already bought your boards?
The Google sketchup content is open-source. The ability to put these objects into Smart Notebook should be available to all users. If Smart then want to make additional premium content available then so be it. This could be separately purchased resource packs, or could be made free to document camera users with all the added extras of owning their camera.
I just think that the ability to handle Google Sketchup objects, and their Augmented Reality features are two separate things and shouldn’t both be linked to a particular brand of document camera.
So SMART – please let all users have access to the 3D objects in Notebook.
What do you think? Leave a comment below.
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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