Try It on Your Board: Exploring the Latest BenQ Board Updates

Narrator: This is Teach Your Way with BenQ, where educators find ideas that work. Let's get started. Katy Chen: Welcome to Teach Your Way with BenQ, the podcast where you learn strategies, tools, and everything else for your boards and for your classes. I'm Katy Chen with the marcom team.

Joining us today is Lauren McMillian. One of the customer success specialist. Lauren McMillian: Thank you so much for joining us today on this episode of our latest and greatest. Um, this is all gonna cover, um, the things that have recently come out in our latest update in February.

Um, while listening to this episode is great, it's even better if you can be at your board. So definitely take a minute, go grab your board or go sit by your board so you can follow along as I show you all the latest features. One of the first features I wanna point out is our AI tools. This is probably the most noticeable, um, feature update because inside of our floating tool, which is the little circle pencil tool, you'll now see a purple button that has the AI logo in it.

Um, that is kind of the very first element that shows you that your board has been updated to the latest update. One thing that you can do with that feature, I'm just gonna open a browser here and you can open up any resource, anything that you have, you can utilize the floating tool on top of everything. If you didn't already know you have all your annotation tools. You can also access a lot of your teacher tools from the floating tool as well.

But our new AI features include the AI lasso. As well as the Ask ai. So I'm gonna show you how this works. When you tap the AI lasso icon, you will wait for a message to pop up that says, circle an area to search.

So if I want to know what is this item that I'm looking at here in my browser, I'm going to circle my item and it's going to populate a, a message for me. So this says, this is an image of a tortoise in a grassy area. It represents concepts of patience, longevity, and resilience. Very interesting, but if I want to know some more information about this, maybe this is part of a lesson that I've already been teaching or maybe we're doing some research, I can also ask more questions.

So one thing with AI that we always model with our students, whether they're elementary STU students or even high school students, is really how to utilize ai. Well, sometimes AI is, it's. The the new and coming, right? It's been talked about forever.

So this is a great opportunity to model for students how we can really provide good prompts in AI and how we can use good questioning skills to give us information. So I tapped the Ask AI icon here, and now it's giving me additional information. So now it's saying, oh, this is a giant tortoise. And it's showing that it is walking on grass with green foliage in the background.

Now, maybe I wanna ask it an additional question, like, well, I don't know, maybe how much do they typically. Away. And so now I can come in here and ask AI, and now we can have a conversation with our little AI chat bot. So this is kind of showing you how both the Lasso search and the Ask AI Chat bot functioned together.

So now it's gonna give me my answers here. It's giving me lots of information. I could continue to ask even more questions. And then again, this is a great opportunity to have students.

We always recommend that they vet the work that they're getting, right? Whenever you ask AI a question, we always wanna make sure, well, how do we know how accurate it is? So this is a great opportunity to help those students who are. Learning those different research skills.

So now we can go back and forth and answer those questions again. I kind of did this in a paired element. I used the lasso search first. I tapped Ask ai, and then it brought me the chat bot, but I can also go directly into the chat bot as well, so I can pop in here.

Click ask ai and now I can just ask it any kind of question. So maybe I want to, you know, create a 30 minute sub activity about this topic because maybe I have to step out and go have a meeting or I'm having a teacher cover for me. You can easily ask AI to create some of those resources and it will really save teachers time. And then you've got a resource right there on the board that can be used for student instruction.

Katy Chen: Hey Lauren, I was wondering, can we use voice on this chat? Lauren McMillian: Absolutely. So one of the best things about our keyboard is it already has a built-in mic access. And because the boards have, um, eight array microphones here on the front, you always have access to a microphone.

So I could easily tap in my search bar when my floating keyboard pops up, I can tap the mic option and then I can ask it a question. Create a lesson plan activity about a tortoise, so now it is writing everything I'm doing and then I can ask AI and it's now going to create those resources for me. Great. And now we have a fun and educational lesson plan activity about tortoises, and it's gonna continue through and it's gonna give us that quick activity.

And it even gives you a little suggested grade level, but you can always, um, add your own information. Of course, with any ai, your output is only as good as your input, so the more information you provide, the better you will get in return. So that's kind of the AI element that has been built into the floating tool. But we also have some of these resources available inside of our digital whiteboard in the latest update as well.

So once you're inside of Easy Right six, um, which is our digital whiteboard, you can also access some of the AI resources here through the latest update. One of the easiest things is whenever you're. Using an image or you have a resource, for example, I can easily split my screen and I can just come and grab an image from Chrome. Now I brought in my image of my frog here.

I'm just gonna put my screen back to full size and now I have a few options here. So above my picture, I have a picture icon with like a little sparkle icon and then I've got the ai. If I want to change the style of this photo or if I want to remove the background, I tap the AI icon here. It's now going to bring me to my image editor options.

I can tap generate and it's going to remove the background. So now I have my little frog, but with no background. I can also come in here and change the style of the photo as well. So if I wanted to turn it to more of like a painting type image, I can insert that as well.

So you do have a couple of AI options whenever you have an image. Now, in this case, I brought an image over directly from Chrome, but you can also do that with importing an image. So if you're bringing in an image from your Google Drive or your OneDrive. You have all of these same functions as well.

You just tap on the image and you look for these icons. The other AI option is your circle to artifi. So I can use my pen to draw a little picture. I'm gonna draw a picture of a house here.

There's a reason I'm not an artist, everyone, and now I can use my select tool to select my whole picture and I can tap the picture icon that shows up. So now you see the picture one, but you don't see the AI button anymore because we are going to circle to Tify. So it pulls up my house and I want to create a realistic photo of a house. And here is my realistic photo of a house.

So being able to come up and draw a picture, um, I can now circle to art. I, and I can now insert my picture of a house here. So again, this is just a great opportunity. Students can come up and draw different items, um, especially if you're looking at different styles of things, different resources, and then you can compare and contrast, um, so you have that option as well.

Katy Chen: Can you do this on all of the models of the boards or any particular ones? Lauren McMillian: Yeah, great question. So these AI elements you can do on all of the O four boards and up, so that includes our REO four, our our MO four, and our RPO four. Katy Chen: The.

Behind the scenes tech people have to push for that update first, or is it automatic or something? Lauren McMillian: Mm-hmm. So yes, the school districts will be able to push this out to their boards and then it will show up. It'll kind of update both easy, right?

And their floating tools. So if you aren't seeing these features just yet, it could be that your, um, administrators have not pushed this out yet, and they always have a pretty good timeline of when they wanna roll those out. So just be patient because it should be coming soon. Another new feature in the update, um, is actually a new app that will show up on your board.

So it is this app right here called Note Browser, if it probably did not go directly to your home screen, so you can find it by selecting your all app icon in the bottom of your board, and then you'll scroll down to note. Browser. So note browser is just another browser, very similar to Chrome, but it's not Chrome, so it does not support Google Sync. It may prompt you to sign in with your Google account, but just know it doesn't actually sync across Google devices.

But what's really great about this is that it has its own annotation toolbar. So if you want to be able to annotate on a browser and you want those annotations to stay, you can use the smart browser where it has its own smart inking tool within it. So I get asked that question all the time by teachers is how can I write my annotations and have them stay? So, for example, I can switch over to the pen tool here, and then I can come in here.

I can annotate, I can tap in here, I can change the color. So if I wanted to point out, you know, draw an arrow and say, this is kind of what we're looking at. Well, when I scroll through my document, notice that my annotations now stay. So again, that is using the note browser app that will now be on your board once your board updates.

Katy Chen: Now, Lauren, when you do this, can you save the image or can you, uh, will it stay with the document? Lauren McMillian: Yeah, great question. So we do have a couple options, um, in your floating tool that I've mentioned earlier. So you do have the camera icon.

One thing that you can do, if you have annotations that, let's say you, you know, you scroll through and you have annotations in multiple sections. So if I come over here and have annotations here, notice I now have an annotation here. And I still have them up here. I can easily come into my floating tool and use my screen record option.

This will record everything on my screen as I scroll along with my voice because of the microphones on the front of the panel. So that would be a great way if you wanted to describe what's happening as well as visually. Um. Pointing that out.

But then you can also use the camera to grab a screenshot. So if we just need a quick screenshot of this annotation here, I can just easily resize this. I've got the whole screen here, and now I can either save it to my cloud drive or I can send it right into easy write. And now it's going to take that picture and put it right here into Easy Write with my annotations.

Katy Chen: And then if you go back into the annotation, can you write text on the screen as well? Lauren McMillian: Um, well, there's not a text box feature, but it is easy enough to pop in here. I can switch to another color, and now I can easily write my text here. If I wanted to have my students come up and label something, it's very easy to just grab your stylus, come up and write, or you can write with your finger as well.

Katy Chen: Thank you, Lauren. What else do you have in store for us? Lauren McMillian: Yeah, so another um, element in our update is our multi window enhancement. So if I have my Chrome browser open, but I also wanna have multiple apps open at the same time, I can easily utilize the multi window feature.

And you can get to that by selecting the sidebar on either side of your board and selecting multi window. One thing to note is that the multi window option only shows up when you have something open. If you're just on the home screen with no apps open, it's not gonna appear. So when I select multi window, it's going to now put my Chrome browser in a smaller window.

I can resize it, I can move it around with the gray bar, and now I want to open easy, right? I can also put easy right in a multi window as well. Again, I can just resize it, move it around. Now I have two windows open at the same time, but the enhancement with our multi window is the split screen options.

So using the icons at the bottom, you now have the option to split into one third of the screen or. A half of the screen or three fourths of the screen. So if I wanted my easy right to be a bit bigger and I want my Chrome browser to only be a third of the screen, it will kind of fill the gap here. And so now.

I can pull all of my resources and it just made it into a smaller window, but I still have all of my other resources over here, and I can fully function with my easy right as well. So we just took it from only being able to split from half and half to now you can decide how big or small you want your, um, split screen to be. So the pin is great because it keeps it on top. So when I pin a resource and have it in multi window, like right now, if I take my easy right.

And put it in multi window. Notice that it's now behind this one because I have it pinned, but if I pin easy, right, it's gonna now move it on top. So whichever one you've pinned will be that one that stays on top, regardless of what app or how many apps you have open. The last thing in our update is actually a co Google Chrome update.

So, um, within Google Chrome, one question that I get all the time is how to ac easily access bookmarks. So on our board, you've got your bookmarks in a couple different ways. Number one, you can log into ams dot ben q.com and you can link your bookmarks here.

They'll show up with your apps. Your widgets and your bookmarks, so anything that you access all the time, those resources you wanna go to all the time. If you, as soon as you tap on that website, it's gonna take you straight there. So now you've got that website handy.

You don't have to go and open Chrome and search for it. Your other option is also to grab the Chrome bookmark widget. If you have the widget, then it has all of your Chromebook marks easily accessible on the home screen. But the latest update with Chrome is actually that now you can bring your bookmark bar directly into the Chrome browser.

So this is the mobile version of Chrome. So in order to enable that, you just have to turn it on inside of Chrome, and you do that by tapping the three dots in the upper right corner, going down to settings, and then going to appearance. And it even has a little new icon. And then showing your bookmark bar.

So now when I pop back over to my Chrome browser, here are all of my bookmarks that I have. Makes it even easier to access all of your resources when you're already inside of the Chrome browser. Katy Chen: Wow, that's so handy. Lauren McMillian: Very, Katy Chen: oh, well, my last question for you is what is your favorite part about the update?

Or is there something that a teacher should get into right away tomorrow morning? Lauren McMillian: Great question. I would say probably the, the easiest one to jump right into is gonna be your note browser. Um, especially because these are kind of the resources that teachers, you guys are already used to using all of your materials every day.

And when you're modeling and you're going through and you're having students up at the board, annotating, drawing, being able to now have all of that to where you can scroll and keep all your annotations is. Such a game changer. So I would say jump right into that one first. Katy Chen: Lauren, thank you so much for joining us today and updating us with everything about the board updates.

Thank you to everyone who's listening to Teach Your McMillian Way with BenQ. If you're near your board, we hope this episode inspires you. Go explore the new features right away, and if the features are not available yet, ask your IT teams to turn them on. If you found this episode helpful, please like and subscribe, share with your colleagues and other teachers who might benefit from these tips, helping educators to discover new classroom tech.

And lastly, thank you again, Lauren, for joining us today and sharing all the updates and also your expertise. We'll see you next time on Teach Your Way with BenQ. Thank you. Bye bye.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us on Teach Your Way with BenQ. For more resources and teaching inspiration, visit us online@benqboard.com. Don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode.