Smartboard meltdown

Well, I'm late getting to my own blog post, because I got completely bogged down on the SmartNotebook software, which made me feel anything but smart, frankly. I remembered all the things we did in class, and how I wanted them to function in my own lesson, but I couldn't keep all of the steps straight. The help menu within the program is totally lame, and slogging through the tutorials to get a specific answer is cumbersome and a major time sucker. Relief came at last from the message boards--some kindly techie at last pointed me in the right direction, with the assistance of my husband. Without both of them, frankly I would have been screwed on this project. The SmartNotebook doesn't seem as friendly with the Mac OS, even after I hunted down the Teacher Activity Gallery, the program was freezing up and acting funky all day and night. It was, to be sure, a huge exercise in frustration. Today was better, and by the time I was finished with my lesson, I had gained a modest comfort level with the interface. I'm still massively confused about how to make all the little gimmicks work, I think a full seminar would be necessary before I would feel comfortable breaking out the Smartboard in front of a room full of kids. I'm still kind of afraid of it, frankly, and I also still feel it's usefulness in an ELA classroom, at least the one I envision, is more limited than with other subjects.