Interactive Touch Screens - Smart learning Suite

[JATSO]

Apologies if this is in wrong place.

 

We use Smart Learning Suite on Smart Whiteboards but we are wanting to move to touch screens for replacing our old Smart Whiteboards

 

I have been informed that if we bought a 3rd party touch screen such as Genie\BenQ\iiyama or any other then we would lose some of the functions of Smart Learning Suite.

Just trying to gauge the feeling on whether we should stay with Smart for our touch screens or is it more hassle for the staff using a 3rd party touch screen, and what limitations if any does the Smart Learning Suite impose when not connected to a Smart panel.

 

Were looking at 65" panels because the jump to 70" is quite a bit.

 

Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

[MD120]

Are you a primary or secondary school? How well used are the current smart boards by staff and have you surveyed what it is they use on the boards, particularly around touch requirements?

 

Those would be the first questions to be asking. An interactive panel is considerably more expensive to a dumb panel, which you could look at then attaching a broadcast device at half the price if you have staff devices which can cast (iPad for example).

[JATSO]

Thanks, We are primary ipads are not the device of choice although we do have some, we use Windows tablets and the staff have their own laptops with Smart Learning Suite installed.

 

Thanks for you advice though.

[MD120]

No worries. iPads were just an example and can use a casting device just as well with Windows tablets if that's something your school wished to look at. I would certainly recommend researching how well the current boards are used for the interactivity and exactly what for and also what elements of the current software is used and are there alternatives that can deliver what they are doing just the same? You may find KS1 may use more than KS2 so a mixture may work. The key I have found in my role is getting that first part correct to help drive the next decision of purchase. It can mean a saving of a couple thousand pounds per classroom but ultimately it's about putting the right product in to help T&L

[Rob_D]

What Smart licencing do you have? And what version of smart are you using?

If you don't already use the Advantage licence you may have to get extra licences to run notebook on non-smart touch-screens.

When our advantage licence ran out (we forgot the renewal date), notebook 17 watermarked everything as unlicensed, stuck a big red banner on the top of the screen, and threw out some licensing nag popups on startup. I think some of the tools might have been disabled, but I can't remember what.

 

When we trialled other boards we found that smart ink didn't play well with non-smart touch screens for some reason. This kind of pushed us toward getting Smart touch panels.

 

We've just got a bach of the SB6065s in, and everyone seems to like them.

[JATSO]

We Have the smart learning suite but using Old Smart Whiteboards.

Discussed the issue with the HOS and the opinion is to bite the bullet and ride with Smart because that's what the staff would prefer rather than working between different type s of software.

Just a quote for 3065 and its 3K over budget but compares well to some of the other quotes I have had non smart panels.

Thanks

[VeryPC_Ross]

Hello All, here is a pretty useful brief that provides a summary of the functional differentiations you can expect to see when using SLS software on

SMART interactive displays versus third party offerings.

 

Hope this helps and have a good weekend.

 

Ross

 

 

 

[RossCummingsOneIT]

I've got one school that had to buy Smart learning suite 17.1 because they have many brands of touch screens that were not playing ball with 11.4(smart notebook), and now they work perfectly with SLS regardless of the brand of the board. I've not had one complaint about a feature not being available

[Blue_Cookeh]

FWIW we found the SMART displays much more polished and user friendly (also cheaper) than the CleverTouch ones anyway. Haven't tried other brands. I think it might have actually been @VeryPC_Ross that originally sold our school on the newer SMART displays... Edited March 13, 2018 by Blue_Cookeh

[Jaymate]

Believe SMART release their new MX range of boards in May that compete price wise with the cheaper end of the market boards like clevertouch etc.