Quite often I find myself in schools with quite old versions of Smart Notebook. Or the technicians have only installed Smart Notebook and not installed the full Gallery or Lesson Activity Toolkit.
This is a real shame as, especially with the Gallery and Lesson Toolkit, you are missing out on a lot of content that can make a difference to how you use the software.
Sometimes there are valid reasons for not upgrading – lack of disk space, very old computers etc. But often it’s because nobody knows that there’s a new version. If you’ve not been told there’s a fully comprehensive gallery area then you won’t know it’s missing. You only find out when a trainer comes in and shows you what you’re missing out on 🙂
So – here’s a quick guide to what you are looking out for. Check you have the most recent versions – and use the check for updates tool to get the most recent version for your computers. If you don’t have administrator access, print it out as a handy guide for your technician 🙂
You can download the most recent version of Smart Notebook from the Smart site here.
Excellent point Danny!
The Gallery and Lesson Activity Toolkit are integral pieces of the Notebook software. Our school district has actually gotten around individual teachers updating their own galleries by loading the most current version on our district server. That way teachers don’t have to worry about updating.
As for Notebook program updates, that has been another story. We have had massive issues between the software, board drivers and smart response. Smart releases these three together now which are stable when together. As soon as someone starts to update one of these pieces, we end up with something malfunctioning.
Having the most up to date version of Notebook is essential, but I would exercise caution because you could end up with multiple versions and failing technology!