SMART has just released a new feature for its SMART Boards that I heard about last year. Â At a teacher’s convention I was talking to a SMART representative who put on his hush-hush voice and told me about a new feature that should be released in the next month. Â The feature he spoke of was touch recognition in all applications. Â This feature has now been released, problem is the convention was last spring.
Although the feature is late, it does add a lot of usability and enables a teacher or presenter to interact intuitively and easily with the SMART Board.  If you use the pen an ink layer is opened up and you are writing, if you use your finger you operate normal mouse commands like clicking and dragging and if you use a broad face of your hand like the palm or fist you erase ink. This allows yet another level of interaction to these types of technologies. This easy and intuitive interaction seems to be the focus of SMART technologies as they continue to expand their educational offerings.
Check out the video below for an idea of what it can do. Â The feature should be available now if you update your firmware and Notebook software.