Several new SMART Interactive Displays (aka Smartboards) have been installed throughout the district this summer. Traditional connectivity to computers at teacher desks often requires new cabling. In the meantime, these SMART Interactive Displays do not require a computer at all to operate. From the board itself, you can login, use the Whiteboard, present Google Slides, show Youtube video’s, draw or annotate on top of anything displayed, etc. You can also connect and present from your computer wirelessly using SMART Mirror (newest Smartboards) or SMART Screen Share (new Smartboards over the past few years). Finally, if direct connection from your laptop to the Smartboard is required and we haven’t reached you with new cabling, you can connect directly to the ports on the front, side or underneath the board. Using these USB ports, you can also directly connect a supported document camera and launch the Visualizer app to present and annotate from the front of your classroom!
Please visit SMART’s short training videos to sharpen your skills in using Smart Interactive Displays: https://www.smarttech.com/en/professional-learning/interactive-displays-powered-by-iq
We recommend that you start with #1 – Personalize, “Sign in to the board” – This is where all of your settings, content, etc will be saved and follow you throughout the campus/district on these. We’ll be providing mini keyboards to help with sign-in, searching and general usage of the Smartboard as soon as we can get them to you.
Teachers, if you did not receive one of the newest Smartboards, we are sorry. Unfortunately, it will take time and funds to get all older Smartboards replaced but the wheels are in motion and getting innovative teaching tools like this to your classroom is important to us!