Mobile Device Support for SMART Notebook

A look at the interface for Extreme Collaboration.

While skimming through The Whiteboard Blog, I recently read about a great add-on for Notebook which will allow students to send ideas directly to the SMARTboard using any web connected device...yup even phones.  The Extreme Collaboration add-on, which is currently in beta, allows for a number of collaborative uses such as brainstorming, class polling, questions, and more.  So it must be really hard to setup and get running, right?  Actually it wasn't...taking only a few minutes from download to testing it.  To get started click here to download a special Notebook file with directions.  Once you have installed the add-on you will see it in the Add-On tab in Notebook.  You will need to activate the widget with your e-mail address, follow the simple directions and you're good to go!

Some of the highlights of the Extreme Collaboration Add-On include the ability to collect responses anonymously or by student name.  You can even have students sign in with a username and password before they submit.  Once started, you can control how many responses each student can submit and how they will be organized on the Notebook page.  Creating a class list was very simple however I did not see a place where you could batch upload a class using a .csv file.  This is something that would need to be included in order to make creating classes less time consuming.

Now What?

Teachers who are using the board everyday in their classroom have often voiced that they would like to see a more collaborative component to using the board with students.  SMART seems to have answered the call through the use of this widget.