SMART Board Notebook Gallery Movies

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6 features covering the Gallery function of the SMART Notebook software.

Text Only Version

Adding Backgrounds

The SMART Notebook gallery is a powerful tool that helps you keep all of your resources in the same place. The software allows you to keep almost any image, text or background within the gallery.

You can access the gallery by clicking on the gallery tab at the side of the screen. If you want to make the gallery stay open whilst you browse it you can untick auto-hide at the bottom of the screen.

When you first open the gallery, you won’t see any content. This is because no area has yet been selected to look into. Choose an area that interests you.

In most sections of the gallery there are three types of content. The first type of content is backgrounds. These are shown by the ‘page’ symbol around the image. Drag the one you want onto the page. You will find it is just a background, a static image that you can’t change in any way. You can write on it, put text or images on it, but you can not alter the actual background itself. A new Smart notebook page is created for every template you try out, so if you try out a few different backgrounds, you will find you have a series of pages. To check on this I can go back to the Page Sorter. I will delete the unwanted pages now by choosing Delete page from the drop-down menu.

Adding Clipart

The second kind of SMART Notebook content is clipart. This is shown by a simple image, without the ‘page’ symbol that denotes backgrounds. So whereas when I drag a background in to use it I get a new page each time, dragging clipart on to the page just adds it to whatever page is there already. Once on the page clipart items can be dragged around, resized and cloned just like text and so on. Clipart can be still or animated, although you will only know it is an animation when it is on the page. Clipart items can often form the basis of a teaching activity, for example labelling this flower diagram.

The best piece of advice I can give you now is to have a real explore of the gallery contents. Start with areas you will want to teach this coming week and make a note of anything you find that is useful. Don’t forget to share your finds with colleagues, and look at other useful 60-second tutorials when you feel ready to move on.

Using Flash

The third and final kind of clipart item is shown with a red F symbol.

Down at the bottom of the 100 square section past all of the page templates and clipart we find there's an item called the 100 Square that has a red F at the corner of it. This shows that it is interactive Flash content.

This goes well beyond the limitations of static images or backgrounds.

Another good example of useful Flash content is the counter, which is found in Enhanced Resources. This can count up or down to any time you like.

The letter F stands for ‘flash’ content. In other words, flash is interactive content that goes well beyond the limitations of static images or backgrounds. Good examples of useful flash content are the hundred square and the countdown clock.

Copying and Pasting into SMART Notebook

In this short movie, we will find an image that we like on the internet then copy and paste it onto the page in SMART Notebook.

Use your web browser to navigate to an image site, like uk.dk.com, Google images or Microsoft Office Clip Art. Find the image you would like to use and right-click it. Choose copy. Nothing appears to happen, but a copy has been made.

Now go back into SMART Notebook and choose the page you would like to add the image to. Right-click a blank bit of the page and choose paste. The image appears on the page.

If it is text you want, almost the same procedure applies. Here I am copying a bit of a news story from BBC news. Highlight only the text you want. Don’t mix text and images as this will not copy across properly.

Right click the text and choose copy. Back in SMART Notebook, right-click and paste again. If the formatting of text isn’t what you expect, don’t forget you can now edit the text by double-clicking it and making changes as usual.

Adding Your Items to the Gallery

Now that you are familiar with getting content out of the gallery, it is time to put the gallery into service as a way to store your own content.

Firstly, if you have found a nice image you know you will want to use several times, put it into the My Content section of the gallery. First open up the gallery and highlight the My Content section. Now drag the image into this area of the gallery. It will be stored here permanently on the computer you are using.

You can do the same thing with anything else on the page as well, if you want to put in shapes or labels you can do that just as easily and they'll stay there permanently

Finally, you can add template pages of your own to the gallery. When you have made a useful page like this one, something you know you will use many times for different reasons, keep it in the gallery for easy access.

Highlight the My Content section of the gallery before clicking Add/Import - Add current page to gallery. It will now be stored there permanently.

Anything you've added to the gallery can be renamed or deleted. You can rename items by right clicking on them and choosing rename and giving it a more sensible page name.

Organising and Sharing Your Gallery with Others

When you have put lots of things into the My Content section of the gallery, make sure you keep control of them all by putting them into their own named sections.

A typical My Content section might contain English, Maths, Games. Add a new subcategory by right-clicking the My Content section and choosing Add new subcategory. This will appear at the bottom of the list, ready for you to give it a suitable name.

If you want to move gallery items between categories of the gallery, just right-click the item. Choose cut, then go to the section you would prefer it to be in and right-click and choose paste.

When you are all organised, you will probably want to give your resources to other people. Just right-click the category name and choose Export as collection file. This will make a single file that contains all of the gallery items. When your colleagues double-click on this file it will install all of the items into their gallery.

Page last updated: 19 March 2009