SMART have recently announced that their SMART Notebook Express web application is now available globally and is no longer in beta. SMART Notebook Express is a lightweight version of their SMART Notebook™ collaborative learning software
SMART Notebook Express enables educators to open, edit, save and share .notebook files from anywhere, at any time, regardless of whether they have access to the Internet. Depending on their needs, users can access SMART Notebook Express online by visiting express.smarttech.com or offline by downloading SMART Notebook Express to their desktops.
Both versions offer the same intuitive user interface. Educators who do not otherwise have access to SMART Notebook software will now be able to use SMART Notebook Express to open and interact with SMART Notebook lessons for use in their classrooms and to share those lessons with colleagues, students and parents.
SMART Notebook Express allows for simple editing of Notebook files with the following features:
- Online or offline – Open, edit and save .notebook files from anywhere, at any time, whether online or via a downloaded desktop application
- Platform agnostic – Works with Microsoft Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems
- Save function – Save SMART Notebook files to your computer, including any new content you’ve added or changes you’ve made to the pages
- Page Sorter – View SMART Notebook software pages as thumbnails and reorder the pages of any presentation by simply dragging and dropping the thumbnails
- Text-editing tool – Add or edit text and change the font style, color and size
- Pen tool – Highlight information or write over SMART Notebook files with digital ink using a variety of colors and line styles
- Object manipulation – Select and move or delete any object on a SMART Notebook software page
- Multiple languages – Available in U.S. and UK English, Spanish, French, German and Italian
- Create new pages or files – Add new pages to any SMART Notebook file, or create a new file
- Multimedia support – Open and view Adobe® Flash® files, video, audio and object animations
Also – with the release of SMART Notebook 10.7 (expected March) there will be support for the common whiteboard format .iwb files.
It’s a very handy application to have bookmarked – especially for those teachers who want to access their Smart files from home and who haven’t installed the software for whatever reason. It’s also useful to point pupils there so they can open notebooks produced in a lesson for revision purposes.
This article sounds like it is straight from the creaters of SMART notebook express. The application is pretty useless. It has VERY limited access – you can view, move and draw onto PRE-MADE smart files. It is ONLY useful for teachers who want to check the suitability of other’s creations or their own notebook files IF created in the full version of Notebook. I was very excited when I found out about this because I am an educator with the acess to a SMART board in my classroom but not to the software on my home computer. i was hoping to be able to create lessons and activities at home to use with my students. This application Does NOT allow for that, you can’t upload any of your own content and the URL tool rarely ever works. You can’t even view how they will actually look to your students, the app only allows for a limited “editing” view. You can get previews (that aren’t funtioning) of others work right on the SMART exchange site, so what was the point of this?
From what I can see Smart intended this as a viewer only. Sadly you can’t really do what the old Student Edition did. To give files to students to use at home you might be better off exporting to PowerPoint.