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SoftChalk eNewsletter |
February 2010
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In this issue:
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Connexions Consortium Membership
SoftChalk recently joined the The Connexions Consortium, a group of organizations and individuals, who work together to advance open source educational technology and open access educational content.
We're excited to become part of a group that is dedicated to the design and development of collaborative, open source, educational content. The group's goal to support education, research and related scholarly activities is directly aligned with SoftChalk’s mission as an educational solution for content creation.
To find out more about the partnership, please view the press release.
For more information on The Connexions Consortium, please visit their website. |
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Lesson Challenge Update
The deadline for lesson challenge submissions has passed and we are now in the judging phase. After receiving 65 entries from clients who are using SoftChalk in innovative and diverse ways it's going to be a real challenge (pun intended) for our judges to pick only 4 winners. Winners to be announced by April 1.
Speaking of judges, we'd like to highlight the members of the 2010 Judging Panel:
Dr. Stephen Holland, Professor, Muscatine Community CollegeDiane Jackson, Training Manager, Quality Matters
Dr. Anne Loochtan, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty, Mercy College of Northwest Ohio
Jacqueline McNair, Program Coordinator, Health Information Technology, Baltimore City Community College
Dr. Grazyna Nowak, Associate Professor, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Georgianna Skinner, Director of Instructional Technology and Online Learning, Florida Keys Community College
Dr. Britt Watwood, Online Learning Specialist, VCU Center for Teaching Excellence |
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Straight From a Chalkie: Andrea Speaks Out
"I've found that when using SoftChalk, our faculty can produce great results without a lot of training time or frustration. As an Instructional Designer it's great to see faculty when they reach the ah-ha moment during content creation."
- Andrea Stone, Instructional Designer, University of Central Oklahoma
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Special Partner Webinar
Seamless Integration: Using SoftChalk with Blackboard
In this partner webinar see how SoftChalk works with Blackboard to:
- Create web lessons that are professional looking, provide assessment learning activities and quizzes (crossword puzzles, hot spots, drag’n drop, slide shows, true/false, multiple choice – and much more).
- Search digital repositories by Keyword and easily bring the discovered media into a lesson. Media can be brought in from Open repositories; Subscription based repositories and institutional repositories. -Integrate web-based widgets right into the lesson. These third party widgets, from thousands of public and private sites, integrate polls, surveys, blogs, video, wikis and many more learning objects.
- And, with Blackboard Learn the finished lesson is imported into your Blackboard course with the literal click of a button
| Wednesday, February 17 |
1pm PT |2pm MT | 3pm CT | 4pm ET |
Click here to Learn More or to Register.
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February Innovator Webinar Series
This series highlights guest speakers from clients who are using SoftChalk in innovative ways.
Acceptable Use Policy – Training an Entire Organization Online
John Robinson, Director Training, Development and Instructional Resources, Northside ISD
The Northside Independent School District educates its staff of 13,000+ on the proper use of the resources they have been granted access. The goal was to create training modules that would allow thousands of district employees with different learning styles to take the required training within a specified timeframe at anytime and anywhere with optimal retention. Until recently this Acceptable Use Policy training lacked the integration of the creative element they were seeking. And most multimedia elements needed to accommodate the different learning styles had to be abandoned due to the excessive hours needed for design and support. Over the years their content hadn’t changed much, but the vehicle used to deliver the content has. Currently they are using Moodle and that helped to solve one delivery problem. An additional challenge was to make sure that every PC being used within the school district saw the same thing. They needed an application that was easy to use, enabled creativity with minimal tech-support and could be integrated with Moodle. And SoftChalk provided that solution. The session ends with a Q&A.
| Wednesday, February 24 |
1pm PT |2pm MT | 3pm CT | 4pm ET |
Click here to Learn More or to Register. |
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Where to Learn More
Introductory Webinars
These 45 minute presentations introduce the key features of SoftChalk. We will view example lessons, and then demonstrate how the lesson content was created using SoftChalk. The session ends with a question and answer period. For more information or to register go to http://www.softchalk.com/webinar/.
Short Courses
SoftChalk is now offering online training sessions to everyone for FREE! Each Short Course is a live 1-hour training session conducted by a SoftChalk instructor using web conferencing. The course includes a presentation and examples, as well as, an opportunity to ask questions and receive assistance from the instructor. For more information or to register go to http://www.softchalk.com/training/.
Innovator Vignettes
Our Innovators in Online Learning presentations are so popular that we decided to give you quick look at what all the excitement is about. These brief vignettes might encourage you to check out the full presentations. For more information or to view the vignettes go to http://www.softchalk.com/lb_vignettes.html.
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