Often when new technologies come along, it can feel like a hassle to take materials that are tried and true—materials that you’ve used for many years— and change them completely to suit the newest technology. Luckily, with SMART Notebook, you don’t have to change everything that you have created in Word or PowerPoint. Instead, you can use SMART Notebook to enhance those lessons and the learning!

Convert your Microsoft Office files to SMART Notebook

Nervous to use SMART Notebook because you will have to start creating all your lessons over? Don’t be! You can easily convert your PDFs, PowerPoints, and Word Documents into SMART Notebook. By doing this, you will be able to annotate the work you convert into Notebook, and add new interactive add ons to the files.

To convert your Microsoft files into SMART Notebook

1. Open the file you would like to convert. 
2. Go to File, Print, as if you were to print the file
3. Select the SMART Notebook Document Writer to be your printer
4. Press print

If you want all of your pictures to look exactly the same, when you are give an option for the printer, select SMART Notebook pages with images. If you want your text to be editable, select SMART Notebook pages with editable objects.

Now, you’ll be able to write easily with SMART Ink, add items instantly, and incorporate even more interactive elements into your lessons. 

Insert 3D Objects

To give the full scope of what students are learning, show them a model or a rendering to build understanding. Whether you’re reading a passage and would like to show the setting, or you’re in a science classroom and want to illustrate the various parts of the human ear, you can do so with 3D Objects.

3D objects are available to download in the SMART Notebook Gallery or in the SMART Exchange. There’s also a huge selection of 3D objects in the Trimble 3D Warehouse (also accessible through the SMART Notebook Gallery).

Click here for more directions on how to download your 3D Objects.

Lesson Recorder

If you want to add easy animation, check out Lesson Recorder in the add-ons section of SMART Notebook. This handy add-on will record the audio and actions of the teacher on a Notebook page. Use Lesson Recorder to model a skill on the board, hands-free, or animate a reading with objects as a visual companion to a reading.  

To record a lesson, 

1. Go to the add-on section
2. Select Lesson Recorder
3. Record your actions on the Notebook page. The recorder will pick up your audio and what you add or change on the Notebook file. 
4. Select stop when you have finished recording  

Now press play or pause the recording to explain things you want the students to notice. 

To Learn More

To learn more about using technology to supplement your classroom, check out our Course Library for courses with for SMART Notebook at Teq Online PD. We offer over 250 live and archived courses including courses on SMART Notebook, SMART lab, SMART response, and our Digital Teacher Certification on the SMART Learning Suite.