Not only have we been celebrating the award, but we are also celebrating our 10-year anniversary! With this will come some exciting changes including our new tagline: “Create. Connect. Inspire!” We believe it captures how SoftChalk gives educators an easy, affordable way to create, organize and share rich content that captures students’ imaginations and inspires learning. The tagline will be visible in our new marketing initiatives as we get set to introduce SoftChalk to more educators across the country.

Read the full e-news here.

SoftChalk content authoring and collaboration software wins a Brandon Hall bronze award for excellence

Richmond, Virginia, U.S. – February 2, 2012 – SoftChalk, a leading provider of content authoring and collaboration software for educators, won a coveted Brandon Hall bronze award for excellence in the Best Advance in Content Authoring and/or Content Management Technology category.

SoftChalk won for its SoftChalk 7 with SoftChalk CONNECT products. The win was announced on January 25, 2012.

“SoftChalk content authoring and collaboration products are critical to the success of e-learning initiatives, giving educators an easy, affordable way to create, organize and share rich content that captures students’ imaginations and inspires learning,” said Sue Polyson Evans, CEO. “We’re excited to be honored by the Brandon Hall Group.”

SoftChalk 7 is content authoring software that empowers educators to create and organize content quickly and easily. SoftChalk CONNECT is a Cloud-based learning object repository where educators can share SoftChalk learning content with the global community, discover shared content for themselves and edit content collaboratively.

Entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior judges, along with Brandon Hall Group’s industry expert analysts and leadership.

About SoftChalk, LLC           

SoftChalk, LLC is an award-winning provider of e-learning software for worldwide education and business institutions. Specializing in the development of intuitive, easy-to-use tools, SoftChalk products allow instructors to create powerful and professional-looking content for e-learning and smart classrooms in K-12, higher education and corporate training. For more information, visit http://www.softchalk.com.

About Brandon Hall Group

Having worked with more than 10,000 clients globally and after 20 years of delivering world-class solutions, Brandon Hall Group is the preeminent research and analyst organization focused on developing research-driven solutions to drive organizational performance for emerging and large organizations.  Brandon Hall Group has an extensive repository of thought leadership, research, data and expertise in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Sales Effectiveness, Marketing Impact, and Executive Management. (http://www.brandonhall.com)

Got SoftChalk? Create Engaging, Interactive Lessons for Online and F2F Learning

Saturday, January 28, 2012 from 9AM – 1PM
Come and learn how to transfer text-based lessons into interactive experiences using SoftChalk. Through this hands-on training, participants will create interactive web pages that incorporate audio, slideshows, text-poppers, self-scoring quizzes, and much more. We will also discuss a variety of ways teachers can publish finished lessons, including to a learning management system such as Angel, Moodle, and Blackboard.

Presenter: Ruth Duffy, ESL instructor, Shoreline Community College, is the lab director of its multimedia center for ESL and GED students. Along with teaching, Ruth has presented at numerous national and state conferences on topics related to computer assisted language learning and best practices in online classroom design. In 2010-2012, she was Shoreline Community College’s eLearning Faculty-in-Residence, providing training for web 2.0 and eLearning tools.

Intended Audience: Designed for educators in K-12 and higher education. Participants need to have a general understanding of word-processing software and be comfortable learning new technologies. Mac and Windows users welcomed.

Cost: $75.00

Click here to find out more details and to register.

Please feel free to forward this email to any of your colleagues who may be interested in attending this workshop. For any questions about the workshop please contact Bernice Ege-Zavala (bezavala@seattleu.edu).

This workshop is not sponsored by SoftChalk, LLC.

From the Chief Chalkie – January Highlights

Hello Chalkies. 2012 is a special year here at SoftChalk because it marks our 10th anniversary of providing innovative e-learning solutions! We have grown immensely over the past 10 years and we are very thankful for all of our clients, the amazing things they are doing with our software and their continuous support and feedback.

Speaking of feedback, a huge thank you goes out to each of you that participated in our online customer satisfaction survey last month. The data we collected is invaluable to us. We are currently going through the responses and making a priority list. We will keep you updated every step of the way as we work to enhance our products.

I truly hope that 2012 will be our best year yet! We have a lot of exciting things in store for the coming year – including a new version, which we plan to share more details about soon.

See the full January 2012 newsletter to find out who won the customer satisfaction survey giveaway, what conferences we’re attending this spring, important tips from the support center, innovator highlights and more…

Happy 2012 to you!

TCEA

Texas Computer Education Association

Date: February 6-10

Location: Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas

Booth: #1920

Visit the Website

Instructional Technology Council

eLearning

Date: February 18 – 20

Location: Westin Long Beach, Long Beach, California

Visit the Website

Innovations

League for Innovation in the Community College

Date: March 4 – 7

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Booth: #316

Visit the Website

IMS Learning Impact

Learning Impact and the Learning Impact Award Showcase

Date: May 14 -17

Location: Toronto, Canada

Visit the Website

NISOD

International Conference on Teaching & Leadership Excellence

Date: May 27 – May 30

Location: Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas

Booth: #608

Visit the Website

This month’s innovators webinar will feature the OC Global program and how SoftChalk is used to re-create the course textbook, making it more accessible for diverse learners, including English-language learners, low-performing students, students with learning disabilities, and students with psychological problems.

As a preface to the webinar we’re sharing a brief interview with Corey Davis, the Executive Director of OC Global today. Read on to find out some of the exciting details about OC Global, the program that gives students the flexibility to complete courses in a shorter time frame outside the constraints of the conventional academic calendar!

What is OC Global?

OC Global is a unique online offering of accelerated and self-paced core transfer courses and completely online Associate Degree programs that allow students to complete a degree on their own schedule. The core courses offered through OC Global can be transferred to any Texas institution.

OC Global offers completely online degree programs for an Associate in Arts – English, Psychology, Sociology and Speech.

What made Odessa College decide to create the program and how long did it take to develop?

Odessa College has been offering courses online since the days of the dial up modem. However, the concept of OC Global began four years ago with an idea about creating a different way for students to go to school. After three years of talking and one year of testing we have come up with what we think is an effective approach to educational environment with asynchronous learning opportunities that support a completely online community with parallel academic rigor and resources for students.

Of all the things that OC Global represents, the most important of these comes back to one thing – Odessa College’s commitment to student access and student success for ALL of its students.

How many classes/courses do you offer and how many students are currently enrolled?

We currently offer 109 Texas Core Curriculum Transfer courses including Humanities, Natural Sciences with labs, Visual and Performing Arts and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. One of our goals to offer courses that people say can’t be done online. We currently offer four completely online degrees: English, Psychology, Sociology, and Speech.

What are the advantages of taking OC Global courses?

There are several advantages:

• Flexible Enrollment: OC Global courses start every four weeks, so you do not have to wait for the beginning of the next semester to start classes.
• Courses available “on demand.” If there is a core course that a student needs, but it is not listed in the schedule, a student can request and OC Global can provide it for you, in some cases in less than a week.
• Free textbooks. One of our missions is to make college more accessible by making it more affordable and one of the ways we do that is by utilizing high quality open source content. An electronic textbook (e-book) is provided free in most (but not all) of the OC Global courses.
• Flexible due dates. All of our courses have flexible assignment due dates, allowing students to work and complete the course at their own pace.
• The “OC Global Guarantee.” This policy allows a student who fails an OC Global course to repeat that course tuition free providing they made a good faith effort to complete the course.
• The “OC Global Student Success Scholarship” This scholarship provides financial assistance to students enrolled in core courses or degree programs offered by OC Global.

Who develops the course content for the OC Global courses?

I layout the “landscape” of every course utilizing a design aesthetic and instructional approach that is based on several frameworks: Donald A. Dorman’s The Design of Everyday Things, one of the most important books you can read in designing a good online courses, and heavily rooted in brain theory; Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, another important read; Madeline Hunter’s ITIP model for direct instruction, an “old-school” teacher decision-making model for planning and delivering instruction; Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English or SDAIE strategies, an instructional approach that was originally developed to support English Language Learners at the elementary level, but which we’ve adapted to support academic language and subject matter knowledge acquisition; and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) instructional strategies. You will find all of these frameworks at work in our online courses.

Bottom line, I design these courses for me. Even though I graduated valedictorian of my high school and attended one of the top universities, Stanford University, I struggled a great deal in school because I’m dyslexic and suffer from extreme Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. To get help in school (which I was deeply ashamed to ask for), I had to apply for accommodations and that was a painful, embarrassing, and long process. So when I began designing courses I made sure to build-in accommodations up-front. No child, no student should have to ask for the help – the instructional scaffolds – that should already be there in the first place.

I know you are using SoftChalk to development the textbooks for the OC Global program, what features have the course developers found most valuable?

We made SoftChalk our primary course-authoring tool because it is customizable beyond what any LMS allows for out of the box. To get the kind of customization that we were after with traditional LMS’s, even open source ones, you have to pay big bucks! By manipulating SoftChalk’s features we can present – very cost effectively, mind you – content the way in which it is presented in a book and on a webpage, which I see as the most intuitive and natural and certainly most common ways in which people access information, NOT the folder structure that dominates the layout of traditional LMS. Clicking on folders disrupts the flow of reading and comprehension because there is nothing to hang the next page’s content with the previous’ ones. SoftChalk “pages” structure allows for a steady stream of “comprehensible input.”

Central to our design is the idea of “one canvas,” meaning we want all of the content to be presented on one page and in one place, NOT through a series of disconnected pop-up windows. Talk about distraction! With SoftChalk’s iframe function we can limit distraction and focus attention to the content at hand, pulling other websites and document-based content directly onto one page.

Another one of our main goals is to deliver courses that can be taken on mobile devices. Using SoftChalk’s mobile friendly activities we’ve created courses in which 75% of it can be accessed on a smartphone, and about 50% on it on regular cell phone. The goal is a 100% on both.

And we wanted classes that were fun and engaging. SoftChalk’s interactive activities help make that possible.

 What feedback have you gotten about the OC Global program from students thus far?

To make use (and sense) of student feedback, you have to be able to interpret “student-speak.” Our students are not going to tell us, “The instructional design and layout of your course facilitates greater content acquisition and mastery which in turn leads increased student achievement.” They’re going to say, “This is easy.” They are not going to tell us “This course fosters a high level of engagement and student-to-student and instructor-to-student interaction.” They’re going to say, “It’s fun!” Those are the two most common feedbacks we get from students. Oh, there’s a third one: “This is different”!

 Thank you so much for your time Corey, in closing are there any additional facts about OC Global that you would like to share?

A huge part of our goal here is to not only engaging our students, but to engage AND EXCITE the entire distance education community and to encourage the exchange of open course content. Toward this end, we will be sharing our ideas and innovations including access to some of our courses through our website, www.myocglobal.com.

Finally, I want to extend my gratitude to SoftChalk, a big company who took the time to support a small community college and helped us do something great. For that, I can’t thank you enough.

Learn more about Odessa College and OC Global by registering for the upcoming webinar:

The Design of a Completely Online Community with SoftChalk as Textbook

OC Global is an approach to an educational environment with asynchronous learning opportunities that support a complete online community. From choosing majors, to time management, to creating portfolios, to flexible start dates – multiple support functions are available to students along with self-paced deadlines. In addition they plan to make this content available for students of all ages and life situations, and for all mobile devices.

This webinar will walk participants through the development of the OC Global, particularly the way in which SoftChalk, and open source content, is used to to re-create the course textbook, making it more accessible for diverse learners, including English-language learners, low-performing students, students with learning disabilities, and students with psychological problems. You will see the unique design aesthetic and instructional approach that is driven by models of accessibility, usability and personality.

Thursday, January 19 3:00pm ET Register Now

From the Chief Chalkie – Happy Holidays

Hi Chalkies! It’s hard to believe that it’s already December, but alas the holidays are upon us and 2011 is quickly coming to an end. We here at SoftChalk are particularly proud of all that took place in 2011, but we’re even more excited about what’s in store for 2012, our 10th year of providing educators with award-winning software solutions!

Speaking of our plans for 2012, we would love for you to share your experience with our products by participating in a customer satisfaction survey. Your input will help us shape the direction of our products for 2012 and ensure that we continue to serve with you with world-class support. Click here to participate in the survey.

Other items of interest this month — the 2012 Lesson Challenge is underway, SoftChalk launched the first Common Cartridge v1.2 conforming application, new tips from our Support Team and a story about how one of our users, James May, was recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as the 2011 Florida Professor of the Year! Read on to get the full stories.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS from the whole team here at SoftChalk!

See the full December 2011 newsletter…

Richmond, Virginia, U.S. – December 07, 2011 – SoftChalk, a leading provider of content authoring software for educators, today announced that through collaboration with JES & Co., the developers of the Achievement Standards Network (ASN), SoftChalk’s content authoring solution has become the first IMS Global Common Cartridge version 1.2 conforming application.

The Common Cartridge specification v1.2 allows curriculum standards alignment at the cartridge, resource and assessment question levels. Digital content, with the curriculum standards attached, can be shared in an interoperable way using this IMS Common Cartridge exchange format.

Curriculum standards, like those represented in ASN, are descriptions of specific educational subjects or skills, each with a unique resolvable identifier. Standards are an important way K-12 schools categorize teaching and learning content, such as what SoftChalk produces. Standards-aligned content supports being able to identify precisely what concepts students have and have not mastered and then to identify alternative resources when needed.

Content becomes more useful when educators know what topics are being covered. With SoftChalk, educators can now include state, Common Core State Standards, and other vital curriculum standards within their content. Authors easily select the appropriate standards from a comprehensive list compiled by the ASN and accessible from the SoftChalk Metadata page. SoftChalk exports these standards as part of an IMS Common Cartridge, suitable for uploading to a learning management system.

“Curriculum standards are a key element in matching content to students’ needs. SoftChalk’s investment in this area will be particularly important to K-12 educators,” says Sue Evans, CEO and co-founder of SoftChalk. “SoftChalk has always been committed to standards, including those from IMS. We see the value of Common Cartridge, particularly its ability to increase the ROI of faculty-authored content.”

“Common Cartridge v1.2 is a breakthrough, enabling interoperable digital learning content and assessments tagged with curriculum standards or learning objectives metadata,” Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive of IMS Global. “Through Common Cartridge’s ability to support the free and open ASN curriculum standards framework, a wide variety of state, national, or institution specific taxonomies can support a wide range of content and platform suppliers without requiring costly alignment services. This reduces cost and lowers a significant barrier to innovation for educational institutions worldwide.”

”The Common Cartridge v1.2 enables education systems to support users’ demands for resources correlated to open source state and Common Core State Standards provided by the Achievement Standards Network. SoftChalk is leading the way with their authoring tool,” explains JES & Co.’s executive director Diny Golder. “Resources authored in SoftChalk can be used with any of the IMS Common Cartridge v1.2 learning management systems without worrying about retaining the alignment information. The ASN standards data can continue to be used in support individualized learning, assessments and critical remediation.”

About SoftChalk, LLC           

SoftChalk, LLC is an award-winning provider of e-learning software solutions designed for K12 schools, colleges and universities. Specializing in the development of intuitive, easy-to-use tools, SoftChalk products improve the quality and effectiveness of e-learning by enabling instructors to create powerful and engaging content. For more information visit www.softchalk.com.

About IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS GLC)

From Innovation to Impact! IMS Global Learning is a nonprofit member organization that strives to enable the growth and impact of learning technology in higher education, K-12, and corporate education worldwide. IMS GLC members are leading corporations, higher education institutions, school districts and government organizations worldwide that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability standards and major adoption projects for the digital support of education and learning. IMS GLC also sponsors Learning Impact: a global awards program and conference that recognizes the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality. For more information visit www.imsglobal.org.

About the Achievement Standards Network

The Achievement Standards Network (ASN) provides a framework for the description of achievement standards often called curriculum standards, produced by governments and other organizations to prescribe what students should know and be able to do as a result of specific educational experiences. ASN data is open source and made available to the education community at no cost. For more information visit asn.jesandco.org.

About JES & Co.

JES & Co., a publicly funded 501(c) (3) education research organization, is a world leader in research and deployment of education programs based on open standards. With 20 years of experience in interoperability and portability of educational resources, organizations around the world come to JES & Co. for leadership and guidance on education programs and initiatives. For more information visit www.JESandCo.org.

Richmond, Virginia, U.S. / Uppsala (Sweden)

With SoftChalk, educators can create professional, engaging, learning content quickly and easily, which enhances their teaching and improves the learning experience for their students.

With ReadSpeaker, students can now click a button on a page of any lesson and have the text on the page read to them. ReadSpeaker makes the online content created with SoftChalk more accessible to students with cognitive issues, learning disabilities, and vision problems, as well as individuals who do not speak or read English as their first language. Additionally, it provides multi-tasking opportunities for learners and portability of content to other devices such as smartphones and tablets.

“ReadSpeaker’s online text-to-speech solutions bring another dimension to SoftChalk’s educational software. With ReadSpeaker, SoftChalk can now propose on-the-fly conversions of text into speech without requiring any downloads whatsoever,” says Joop Heijenrath, ReadSpeaker Co-Founder and responsible for ReadSpeaker’s business operations outside of Europe. “The ability to have courses read aloud and highlighted at the same time helps more students access online text content.”

“ReadSpeaker offers a great text-to-speech solution that enables our content to be even more flexible in addressing the varying learning styles and needs of students,” said Sue Evans, co-founder and CEO of SoftChalk.

To learn more about the integration, please register to attend the upcoming webinar (Thursday, December 1, 2011 at 11:00AM EST). This webinar will feature Georgia Virtual School and their use of the ReadSpeaker integration within SoftChalk to address diversity.

About ReadSpeaker

ReadSpeaker® is the worldwide leader in online text to speech. In 1999, ReadSpeaker pioneered the first-ever speech-enabling application for websites. Today, the company’s web-based text-to-speech services are used by thousands of websites/mobile apps and millions of users worldwide every month. ReadSpeaker speech-enables online content on the fly in 35 languages and 90 voices. The company provides a portfolio of web-based text-to-speech solutions for websites, mobile sites, mobile apps, RSS feeds, online documents and forms, as well as online campaigns. More than 5000 corporate, media, government, and nonprofit customers around the world use ReadSpeaker online text-to-speech solutions. For more information, visit http://www.readspeaker.com.

About SoftChalk, LLC

SoftChalk, LLC is an award-winning provider of e-learning software for worldwide education and business institutions. Specializing in the development of intuitive, easy-to-use tools, SoftChalk products allow instructors to create powerful and professional-looking content for e-learning and smart classrooms in K-12, higher education and corporate training. For more information, visit http://www.softchalk.com.

I had the opportunity to conduct a short interview with Deanna Mayers, the Curriculum Coordinator of blendedschools.net, to find out out more about the organization and their interest in starting an OER repository for K-12 learning objects. Read on to get an introduction to BSN and then register for the webinar to learn more about the implementation!

What is blendedschools.net (BSN)?

blendedschools.net (BSN) is a not-for-profit company that provides technology, curriculum and professional development, so schools can easy create and implement online programs and blended learning in every classroom. BSN is not a school. And BSN does not sell single course enrollments. BSN provides K-12 local educational authorities with the resources they need for their teachers to teach their students online and create and provide meaningful experiences that enhance flexible, blended learning opportunities for their students.

Why did the founders of BSN decide to start the company?

blendedschools.net (BSN) was founded by Pennsylvania schools to help schools adopt and implement online teaching and learning initiatives. Initially, BSN focused on helping schools expand course offerings for small and rural schools. BSN quickly grew into helping schools provide cyber academies and online summer schools. Today, the largest use of BSN’s technologies, curriculum and professional development is to transform regular classrooms into blended learning communities.  

How many classes/courses are currently being offered through BSN?

BSN provides about 180 different one-semester K-12 courses to our member schools. The courses cover core curriculum kindergarten through high school and a wide variety of electives from music to Advanced Placement to elementary health. More than 20,000 sections of these courses are being taught in our member schools this semester.

Who develops the course content?

BSN courses are developed by certified educators to meet state and national standards, including Common Core standards.  Teachers participate in extensive professional development in technology, instructional strategies, and curriculum design. The professional development is delivered in a blended learning format, offering face-to-face training along with synchronous and asynchronous online learning experiences.  Our course development program is designed to build capacity in practicing teachers, which then influences how teachers teach after completing their course development projects. All learning objects and courses are peer reviewed and go through a copy editing process prior to releasing for use by our membership.

What needs brought BSN to acquire a private CONNECT site (Learning Object Repository)?

BSN is committed to adopting online teaching and learning technologies that expand and enrich teaching and learning. The major goals for our branded CONNECT site are to increase accessibility to high quality learning objects and promote blended learning. The site will be an Open Educational Resource named “BSN Cloud.” We will publish K-12 learning objects developed by experienced, trained teachers.  These freely accessible learning objects are peer reviewed and aligned to Common Core Standards.

The goal to promote blended learning is a long-term commitment by BSN to provide teachers and students free and easy access to high quality accessible learning objects.  As teachers begin using more online resources in a blended learning environment, the natural next progression is heightened teacher interest in creating learning objects for themselves.  Once teachers begin to act as instructional designers for online learning objects, their increased capacity increases students engagement exponentially in traditional classrooms.

What features of BSNCloud will be most valuable to your members?

The most valuable resource of BSN Cloud, our branded CONNECT site, will be the comment and rating system.  We plan to critically evaluate comments and use ratings on each learning object to influence redevelopment of our resources.  This direct feedback from the users of our content will increase the quality of our existing content, and build a collaborative environment where “smart mobs” of teachers and students will expand and enrich the online teaching and learning experience.

Thank you so much for your time Deanna, in closing are there any fun facts about BSN that you’d like to share?

I think this is the most important number—BSN is providing the technology and curriculum for about 262,000 this semester.

Learn more about BSN’s implementation of their own learning object repository by registering for the upcoming webinar:

Empowering Schools to Teach and Learn Online using Open Educational Resources and SoftChalk CONNECT

As blendedschools.net (BSN) creates their learning initiatives it is committed to providing their teachers, students and parents with quality sharable learning objects. BSN is the first to use an independent branded version of SoftChalk CONNECT to enhance their blended learning initiative. BSNCloud will host Open Educational Resources (OERs) built by BlendedSchools.net. The resources will be available worldwide and teachers will be able to directly embed these resources in their learning environment or link to the resource to expand and enrich instruction. During the session BSN will discuss next steps with this tool and how it they plan to use it to encourage and support blended learning initiatives across the country.

Wednesday, November 16 3:00pm ET Register Now