I'd like to start this post by taking a minute to thank the staff of Hunting Hills High School in Red Deer, Alberta. I just spent the past 2 days leading workshops with the Math/Science department and the Humanities department and had a lot of fun with the participants on each day. They were a great group of fantastic educators with lots of ideas, great energy and varying levels of background knowledge with SMART products.


Now onto my post...with so many tools in SMART Notebook, the floating toolbar and the control panel, it's easy to overlook some of the features that are available to you. Unless you have time to sit down and thoroughly experiment with all the the icons, buttons and links, I find that most users initially find a level of comfort with using "main" tools in their classroom and don't dive into the rest.

One of my favourite tools that I believe gets overlooked far too often is the area capture tool. When it is selected, it's own mini toolbar follows you into any program or website, and allows you to take a picture of an rectangular area, a window, your desktop or an area drawn by freehand.

Why do I like it so much?

• It's super easy to use (even the most introductory users can grasp the concept and implement it immediately)
• The picture is instantly embedded into a SMART Notebook file, so that you can manipulate it like any other object on a page
• The applications for use are endless -- screen shots to demonstrate a new skill, area captures of a website that your students explored to use as a visual reference, introducing layering in art (by taking freehand captures of vegetation, animals, people, etc. and building a new scene), the list could go on and on

But my favourite reason that I like this tool? Because of the wonderful reaction I get from "1st-time viewers" of its use, "I can take a a picture of WHAT?"

Vanessa :)

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