SMART Board Maths Beta 3

I have been having a play with the latest update from SMART - Maths Beta

Before I elaborate further let me point out a couple of things, first this is just a BETA, you can download and play with this, but it will expire in the middle of ~~Autumn term~~ October 1st. After that you will need to pay for it. Also this is not an addition to the Notebook gallery as we have seen before, rather you now get a series of extra tools to play with, obviously Maths tools, hence the name!

With the Beta, you get the following:

A compass

A protractor

A ruler

A quick Regular polygon maker

A quick Irregular/ point to point creator

A line graph generator

A number line generator

Am I impressed?

The compass, protractor and ruler are very easy to drag around, re-size and generally manipulate. They are tools that Activ software has had for a long time and should really be standard, so I am disappointed that these will have to be bought as an add-on (do correct me if this is wrong). The shape tools are very handy as it can often be a bit of a faff drawing these on screen under the current toolbar. I most liked the number line generator which allowed me to quickly plot a negative to positive number line, which would take a very long and fiddly time under the current arrangements.

I was most let down by the line graph tool, this proved unwieldy to plot coordinates on and I wanted to have the ability to switch between line, block and bar graphs. It seems I'll have to stick with ITPS for this area.

If you have any questions re: this update SMART have got a FAQ here