Sympodium Tutorial Script

  1. Another feature at the Instructor Station is the sympodium interactive display. It is much more than a monitor.
  2. The sympodium interactive display is equipped with an annotation pen. On older models the pen is located in a slot on the back right side of the display. On newer models it is located at the top back of the display.
  3. The pen provides instructors with the capability to annotate in any application. Annotations can be saved by using the Sympodium screen capture utility to its onboard application, Smart Notebook. When using annotation on a PowerPoint slide show you will be prompted if you want to save annotations when you close the slide show preview. If you select ‘yes’ the annotations will be saved as polygon objects on the slide show that can be deleted at any time.
  4. The sympodium interactive display is equipped with two onboard USB ports at the lower left and lower right side of the display.
  5. The pen device can behave like a mouse for “clicking” or like a pen for “writing”. To use the pen for clicking like a mouse, push the cursor button located at the top of the sympodium. Now just double tap on icons on the display to open them. A single tap will move you through file menus. To use the pen device for writing push on any of the three pen buttons (black, blue or red) to the right of the cursor button. You will see the desktop icon change from the cursor to a pen. You can now annotate over any application. There are two methods for erasing annotations. To remove all writing from the display, push the cursor button at the top of the display. Then double tap on the display with the pen and the annotations will disappear. To erase just a portion, push the eraser icon to the right of the three pen buttons at the top of the sympodium. Press the pen lightly on the display and erase specific items.
  6. The buttons at the bottom of the sympodium display provide access to other useful tools. The mouse button on the far left and right at the bottom provide “right mouse click” functionality when using the pen. Simply push either button and the next tap of the pen on the display will give you the “right mouse click” drop down menu. After that the pen will return to left-click cursor functionality. The second button from the left provides a floating keyboard. This keyboard can be used to enter information without accessing the keyboard attached to the computer. The button at the center top, it looks like a book, will open Smart Notebook. This onboard application lets you capture and export to PowerPoint, PDF, JPG or Webpage what you are demonstrating in class. For further instructions on this application go to the Smart Notebook tutorial.
  7. The button at the center bottom, under the Smart Notebook button, is the screen capture camera toolbar. When you push this button a toolbar with four camera selections will appear and Smart Notebook will open on the taskbar of the computer.This toolbar will generally appear at the upper left of the display screen. You can click on the title bar to move this toolbar anywhere on the display. The capture utilities, from left to right are: The marquee camera, which allows you to surround a specific area or image with a bounding box and capture an image of it to SmartNotebook. The second capture utility from the left is the Area capture camera. This allows you to move your cursor over specific areas, such as an application toolbar, and where the slanted grid lines cover is the area that will be captured. The third capture utility from the left is the full screen capture and the capture utility at the far right is the “freehand” marquee which you can draw, around specific items you want to capture.
  8. To the right of the Camera Capture button is the floating tools button. A click on the button brings up a palette of “floating tools” for easy access to items like the highlighter, marquee camera, eraser, cursor and undo features.
  9. The Smart tools, located at the right side of the display provide easy access to: Smart Notebook, Screen Recorder, Video Player, floating Keyboard, floating tools, and sympodium utilities.
  10. Smart Notebook, provides capture, annotation, and white board features to name a few. See the “just in time” tutorial on Smart Notebook.