Handwriting Recognition (in Hebrew, Too!)

The great news we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. SMART Notebook 10.8 recognizes Hebrew handwriting!

You can write all your class notes in Hebrew script, open the drop-down menu, choose “recognize…” and convert your handwriting into your default Notebook font. In fact, you can even select Hebrew and English handwriting together, and each will be recognized in its own language.

The first step is to download the language pack for Hebrew either when first installing Notebook 10.8 or via the SMART control panel. To access the control panel, click on the SMART Tools icon and choose “Control Panel.” In the Control Panel, there is an option on the right-hand side of the window called “Language Settings” which will open the “Language Setup” window. Here, the second option is “Handwriting Recognition.” Open the drop-down menu and choose Hebrew or עברית. If you did not do so during installation, you will now be prompted to download the language pack.

At this point, when you write on the SMART Board in Hebrew you can select the handwriting and open the drop-down menu. The first option is “Recognize…” and shows what the computer understood you wrote and will convert to that text if pressed. The second option in the drop-down menu is “Recognize Languages.” Selecting this option allows you to choose the language in which Notebook should try to understand your handwriting. This should be set to Hebrew (or עברית if you select “show native names”). If Hebrew does not appear on the list of options, choose “Add More…” and proceed as above.

A fascinating discovery relates to recognizing Hebrew and English together. Generally speaking, Notebook will not recognize a word correctly unless the recognition language is set to the language of that word. To recognize Hebrew, the language recognition should be set to Hebrew. However, Notebook will still correctly recognize English handwriting even when set to Hebrew. In fact, you could select both English and Hebrew handwriting together and select “Recognize All” and Notebook will still recognize both words in their respective languages, as long as the language recognition is set to Hebrew.