SMARTDRAW IN EDUCATION:

Senior Lecturer at a Major University in Boston, MA Enhances Teaching with SmartDraw

Ed Trachtenberg is a senior lecturer at a major university in Boston, MA, where he's been teaching computer related courses for the last 25 years. He was looking for an easy way for both his students and himself to create computer program flowcharts for his courses.

He was familiar with MS Word^® and PowerPoint^®, but knew he needed something easier. One of his students suggested he try SmartDraw, so he downloaded the trial. Right away he could see that SmartDraw was more flexible and user-friendly than the alternatives.

"SmartDraw is definitely easier to use than either Word^® or PowerPoint^® for creating complex flowcharts, and it's less costly than Visio^®," said Trachtenberg. "Also, it seems to have a wider variety of options."

Unlike other programs that provide users with a blank screen and expect them to draw, such as MS Visio^®, with SmartDraw, users select from a template that is specifically designed to create the type of illustration they need. For example, SmartDraw contains dozens of SmartTemplates for a variety of flowcharts including SDL diagrams, process flowcharts, workflows, and more. In addition, SmartDraw contains templates for software design, networking, and engineering.

Although he had no graphic design training, Trachtenberg was able to quickly create polished-looking flowcharts in just a few minutes.

"SmartDraw really saves me time because there is such a large selection of tools available," he said.

SmartDraw allows users to select an appropriate template, and then enter in the relevant information. The software does the rest: building the graphic automatically using built-in rules and professional design themes to guarantee polished, presentation-quality results in just a few minutes. In addition, SmartDraw also features one-click export to popular document types such as PDF and PowerPoint^®, making it easy to share SmartDraw creations with others in presentations.

Trachtenberg is so impressed with SmartDraw that he's been recommending it to his classes at the university for the past three years.

"SmartDraw is a fantastic alternative to the other 'high cost' programs," he said. "It's on my syllabus!"