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Books > Tech Tips > What's new in Notebook 10-6
What’s new in Notebook 10-6 Updating to Notebook 10.6 software takes a totally new install, but it is not difficult. It took me about 20 minutes on a high speed cable connection to complete it. If you have Notebook 10 installed, the easiest way to update is to go into Notebook, select the Help menu, then pull down to “Check for Updates…” You should update SMART Product Drivers as well as SMART Notebook. At some point in the install, a dialog box will ask if you want to install the Lesson Activity Toolkit and the Essential for Educators (Gallery). If you don’t check this box, your existing LAT, Gallery and My Gallery content will remain intact, which is a good thing, because the Gallery is a lengthy install. During the installation you are asked for a license key. However, if you typed in your license key in an earlier install of Notebook 10, you don’t have to re-enter it. The only interruption in the install is when you are asked if you want to install non-English handwriting recognition. New additions to SMART Notebook 10.6 include transparent backgrounds, measurement tools, regular polygons, and curved lines. Upgrading to 10.6 gives math teachers who use SMART Notebook access to several visual math tools. It is also the necessary platform for installing the long awaited SMART Notebook Math Tools. Some other noteworthy Notebook features that were released before 10.6 include a multicolumn floating toolbar and the Clear Page tool. Some of the new features are shown below.
When scanning across the Toolbar in SMART Notebook 10.6, you see icons of two new tools, the Transparent Background and Measurement Tools icons.
By customizing the toolbar (right click in between any two tools), you can add five tools that have recently been added to SMART Notebook: Regular Polygons (new in 10.6), Clear Page, Clone Page, Show/Hide Alignment, and Zoom. Transparent Background
Transparent background navigation toolbar large
Transparent background navigation toolbar small Transparent Background lets you use some SMART Notebook tools with other programs. It is somewhat like using the Floating Toolbar, but you have to remember that you are still in SMART Notebook. This becomes obvious when you use the camera capture tool to capture an image. The image is pasted onto the screen where you would expect it to be when using Notebook’s Edit/Paste command. At this point, you know you are still in SMART Notebook. You will realize “it’s just invisible.” So, why not just use the Floating Toolbar? Because the new Measurement Tools aren’t available from the Floating Toolbar.
With the new Transparent Background, you can use these measurement tools with any software program or website. For a demonstration, navigate your browser to www.mapquest.com and find my hometown, Go to the Windows taskbar and open up SMART Notebook software 10.6. Click on the Transparent Background icon. You can also access the Transparent Background by using the pull down menus, and choosing View/Transparent Background.
Using the Transparent Background feature makes Notebook seemingly disappear. Mapquest with the Transparent Background Navigational Toolbar will be displayed. Click on the Insert Ruler icon, and a ruler will pop into your screen, exactly where you would expect to insert a picture into Notebook software.
To continue the demonstration, let’s say that a friend of mine has a little Piper Cub airplane and wants to take me on a trip from
Reposition the ruler so the 0 point is at The most direct route from Protractor Now, let’s play with the Protractor.
Touch in the center arc of the protractor to move it around on the screen.
Touch in the middle arc band to resize the protractor. Drag in to shrink and out to expand. To rotate the protractor, touch on the outer arc and drag.
What bearing should we take to fly from
To measure degrees, move the green angle handle along the protractor’s arc. Touch the inject arrow to inject an angle next to the protractor. In this example, the angle displays 74 degrees. As a circle is 360 degrees, and since we pointed the protractor’s base North, we have to travel 360 – 74 = 286 degrees to fly from
One of Notebook 10.6’s new measurement tools is the Geodreiech protractor. The Geodreiech protractor was invented by ARISTO in
In this example, you can see how SMART’s Geodreiech protractor easily displays the angle. Move and resize this set square in much the same way as the regular protractor. The Geodreiech protractor isn’t well understood in the Compass
In this example, let’s use the compass with the ruler to draw a 50 mile radius around
Drag on the arm which holds the compass pencil in place, to 50 miles, 5.6mm on the ruler.
Draw a 50-mile radius around The Measurement Tools can be used in SMART Notebook for creating or delivering math lessons. When you think about it, in the demonstration we just did, you were using SMART Notebook the whole time… Notebook was just transparent. Other recent additions to Notebook software
The Clear Screen Tool lets you delete everything on a Notebook page with one touch. In the past, the only way to do this was to Select All and then Delete.
New Shapes have been added, including circles scribed from a centerpoint, rectangles with rounded corners, perfect squares, 30-60-90-degree and obtuse triangles, and half-circles.
Other new shapes include regular geometric shapes with equal sides and angles, including the equilateral triangle (3), square (4), pentagon (5), hexagon (6), heptagon/septagon (7), octagon (8), nonagon/enneagon (9), decagon (10), hendecagon/undecagon (11), dodecagon (12), triskaidecagon (13), tetrakaidecagon (14), pentadecagon (15). Other names for these shapes with 10 sides or more are the 10-gon, 11-gon, etc. Reference: www.mathsisfun.com
Line tools – two parabolic arcs have been added to the line tools.
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After drawing an arc, you can rotate and resize it, which is useful in illustrating the measurement of an angle. Touch the object’s drop down menu (or select and choose the Properties Tool) to change line thickness and add an arrow to the start or end point. Alignment and Zoom Tools
The new Alignment tool gives you access to the alignment controls from the Notebook toolbar.
The Zoom Tool lets you access to the View/Zoom pull down menu from the Notebook toolbar.
The ability to make big tables have been a feature of Notebook software for some time, but it hasn’t been covered in Simple SMART Skills books. Just create a table using the Table Tool, then drag the lower right tile of the table. This lets you create larger tables. The table size is only limited by your screen resolution.
Floating Toolbar
The multicolumn Floating Toolbar came out in late versions of Notebook 10.0, just before Notebook 10.6 was released. The Floating Toolbar Customize Properties Tool is shown here. It looks like a gear tab on the right edge of the Floating Toolbar, allowing you to select properties for any customizable tool. In this example, I have a two column Floating Toolbar.
The multicolumn Floating Toolbar came out in late versions of Notebook 10.0, just before Notebook 10.6 was released. The Floating Toolbar Customize Properties Tool is shown here. It looks like a gear tab on the right edge of the Floating Toolbar, allowing you to select properties for any customizable tool. In this example, I have a two column Floating Toolbar.
The Floating toolbar can now be positioned much lower or higher on the screen, than in earlier versions of Notebook software.
Menus
Two new commands have been added to the pull down menus in Notebook 10.6. First, Transparent Background has been added to the View menu.
Second, the Measurement Tools (Ruler, Protractor, Geodreieck Protractor and Compass) have been added to the Insert menu. |
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