By Emily Sparago
13-year-old student and aspiring teacher

Just recently, I downloaded the SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0 beta.  And I love it!

When you open up the Gallery tab in SMART Notebook 11 collaborative learning software, which is a picture of a landscape and a magnifying glass, you’ll see a number of options.  SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0 has three tabs near the top titled: Gallery Content, My Content, and Options.

Under the Gallery Content tab, before you have searched anything, there are four main folders.   The first one is SMART Exchange.  In here, there are files from the SMART Exchange website!  This is organized into different academic subjects to make your searching experience easier!  These are customizable and you are able to change a page or two to better fit your lesson.

The second folder under the Gallery Content tab is Lesson Activity Examples, which is a very resourceful folder.  Here, you have pictures which could be good Activity Objects, “Interactive Techniques” (which I suggest you check out!) to spruce up your lessons and make them more interactive.  They also have 3D Objects; these consist of diagrams or 3D pictures!

The third folder is entitled Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0.  These also help to make your lesson more interactive and fun for the students.  SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0 has games like dominos and board games.  The Graphics folder (found in the parent folder Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0) are pull tabs, labels and buttons, borders, icons, and bars and boxes.  These all accompany the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0.  An engaging, fun lesson can be easily created with the conveniently organized accessories!   The possibilities are endless with Lesson Activity Toolkit.

In the final folder, titled Gallery Essentials, are all of your multimedia, pages and pictures.  These are separated into folders by subject.  However, you don’t have to sift through pages in the Sports and Recreation folder to find a picture of a baseball.  You can use the search bar, type in “baseball” and filter it (a new feature in SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0.) so all that is displayed are images.  This narrows your search and saves you time.

I couldn’t wait to use SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0 in one of my lessons.  I took an old lesson I had created and wanted to use SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0 to enhance it.  This was a lesson about the frog life cycle.  I had a few pictures put together in a circular form to show the life cycle.  Under each picture was a line to put the stage name.  Near the bottom of the page was a word bank.  This was a pretty dull lesson.  I searched through the Gallery with a vague term of “frog,” and filtered the results to video.  Here I found a video about metamorphosis!  I added a new page before the life cycle activity, and inserted that video.  I also wanted to spruce up the activity itself.  Lesson Activity Toolkit was my savior! Searching through the folder entitled “Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0,” I remade the interactive activity that was much, much better!  I inserted pull tabs from the Graphics folder.  Then I grouped the name of the stage to the tab, and created a box (the same color as the background) to hide the words.  Magic!  This will be a great activity, creating surprise for the student, since they won’t know what stage name they will get!

The next tab is My Content.  This is where you save certain things you have found in the Gallery.  I use the Timer very often, so I have saved it into this convenient tab, where I can easily bring it into my SMART Notebook lesson. To do this, I searched for the word ‘timer’ in the Gallery tab.  When I found the timer I liked, I simply clicked on it once, activating the small drop down arrow in the top corner.  Drop down the menu, and select Add to My Content.  Now, for the next time I need the timer, all I need to do is chose SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0, the My Content tab, and there is my timer!  Not only do I use this for lessons, but I also use it to bake!

SMART Notebook Gallery 2.0 is new and exciting!  Download the beta from the Gallery in SMART Notebook 11 software, and see what you can do!

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About the author

At just 13, Emily Sparago is a soon-to-be high school freshman at Dodd Middle School in Cheshire, Connecticut, with a passion for teaching and technology.  Sparago has wanted to be a teacher since she was five years old. Her first experience using a SMART Board was in third-grade and it was love at first sight for Emily.  Ever since then, she’s been researching SMART Boards and secretly craving one.  It was three years ago when Sparago brought it to her parents’ attention that she wanted her own SMART Board.

After raising the money, she reached her goal and purchased a SMART Board interactive whiteboard.  Word quickly got out, not only about Sparago’s SMART Board, but also her love of teaching.  Since then, she has had the opportunity to be a guest teacher at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut on a few different occasions and she hopes to teach more in the future.