How remiss have I been! In all the time I’ve been writing here, I’ve failed to dedicate a post to one of my favorite pieces of technology: the SMART Board 800 series. Most of the SMART Boards in schools today are part of the 600 series, which feature the same type of touch-interaction (known as resistive technology) as the Palm Pilots of “the pre-iPhone era”. Accurate and simple to manufacture, resistive technology nevertheless has a Continue…
There has long been a gap between the quality of video conferencing available on a PC and the quality attainable through a dedicated video conferencing codec. Historically this was related to the processing power available on a PC to encode and decode the video stream, but that bottleneck has shrunk dramatically in recent years. The difference has persisted mostly because the video quality available to the PC is poor. Webcams are too small to serve Continue…
One of the things I’ve always loved about SMART Boards is that you don’t need a remote to use the system. They all have a power button and an input button and a volume knob attached to the system, mounted permanently, impossible to lose. Unfortunately, as you step up into more complex systems, the type that might be installed in a conference room or multi-purpose room, the components are no longer mounted all together on Continue…
You’ve seen Notebook 11, but did you know that SMART has a dramatically simplified Whiteboarding program for business users? It’s called Meeting Pro, and version 3.0 was just released at the beginning of April. Here are 3.0 reasons it can improve collaboration in your office. 1.0) The primary function of Meeting Pro is to provide touch interaction with your desktop on a SMART interactive whiteboard. Most of the information you need to share in a Continue…
It’s common to have multiple audio output devices attached to your computer. There is an output jack, built-in speakers if you have a laptop, and frequently USB devices of all shapes and sizes to produce sound. Currently, on Windows or Mac OS X, changing between these involves digging into settings menus and clicking dropdown boxes. It is far from automatic. In fact, it’s so cumbersome that devices are rarely changed, and using new ones can Continue…
Sometimes it pays to take a step back and really think about all the noise in a classroom. Is the heating or air conditioning loud? How about the dull drone coming from the classroom next door? Can you hear traffic from nearby roads? Many of these things may seem insignificant, or certainly quieter than your voice, but they can affect your ability to clearly hear and be heard. The severity of noise can be difficult Continue…
This is the SMART Document Camera 330. It is SMART’s newest document camera and it has some interesting and frequently overlooked capabilities that we’re going to discuss here today. First, as a basic document camera it allows you to view objects and documents on a projector or video monitor in real time. It connects between your computer and projector, and uses the exact same cabling you used before. You just unplug the video cable from Continue…
You may be used to having a mouse and keyboard for everything, but do you need them? Sometimes we are so used to completing tasks the same way day after day, we fail to realize there may be a better way to do the same thing. For instance, just the other day I was installing a SMART Board with a push button controller. The software I use to configure these controllers looks like this: During Continue…
The USB standard does more than provide a communications channel between the host computer and the devices plugged into it. It also provides the electric power those devices need to operate. Originally designed to power keyboards, mice, joysticks, and webcams, this readily available power source is commonly tapped to run external hard drives without a power adapter; charge cellular phones; and power SMART boards or even LED lighting. Compared to the power that comes out Continue…
Apple uses a port known as “Mini Displayport” to connect extra screens on machines made after the fall of 2008. And this summer Apple updated that port and renamed it Thunderbolt, although the connectors and cables stayed the same. Before that, it was an entirely different Apple specific connector. How confusing! This is entirely different from the standard VGA connection The Chariot Group uses when we install SMART Boards. What this means is we need an adapter in Continue…
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