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.

Online Teaching, Streaming Multimedia, Copyright – and all that Jazz

Imagine teaching music fully asynchronously as David Hooten does at McLennan Community College.  How does he resolve the copyright issues with so much of his material? What kind of software can be integrated with SoftChalk to make an even richer experience for the students? Where do all the media reside and how are they integrated?  These are a few of the questions our presenter will discuss as he describes how he uses SoftChalk to create engaging and effective learning experiences. The session ends with a Q&A.

Presenter: David Hooten, McLennan Community College

Lesson Plans, Multimedia Content and Interactive Whiteboards

At Shenandoah University, students in teacher education preparation programs are learning to create lesson content that are given to large and small groups of children on interactive whiteboards such as Smart Technologies’ Smartboard and Promethean’s ActivBoard. To create this content they use Thinkfinity.org resources such as lesson plan ideas, primary sources, and links to content partner sites along with SoftChalk to develop interactive lessons that are given to K-12 students during their field placement and student teaching experiences. A brief video will show how a student uses the Interactive Whiteboard in class.

Join special education teacher-educator, Diane Painter, as she begins with a brief overview of Verizon Foundation’s Thinkfinity.org website and shares some of the lessons that have been created to support K-5 content through various kinds of SoftChalk activities such as photo album, sorting, jigsaw puzzle, DragNDrop, labeling and other engaging activities that spark the interest and active learning of elementary-aged students.

Presenter: Dr. Diane D. Painter, Assistant Professor, School of Education and Human Development, Shenandoah University

Lesson Challenge Winner: Online Components of Microbiology Labs

Ferris State University is developing a modular online laboratory manual to enhance student participation and learning in introductory Microbiology courses. These modules include animations, embedded videos, and library resources.

In the past, instructors used a variety of published laboratory exercises in these classes but all exhibited the same shortcomings.  The students rarely read the exercises, they poorly understood the concepts and procedures, and demonstrated low retention. As a result, faculty spent too much time on pre-lab talks and trouble-shooting rather than facilitating student learning.

SoftChalk laboratory modules are being developed to address this situation. They have been simple to author and easy to deploy as SCORM modules in our LMS. Instructors can now track and grade student pre-lab activities – remediating as necessary in class. In addition, these resources have simplified document distribution in the lab and serve as an excellent review mechanism for quizzes and exams. The online modules, furthermore, reduce student costs by replacing relatively expensive published manuals for the course.

During this session, you will see several of the lab modules that have been created thus far and how they are incorporated into the learning management system.  In addition, we will discuss how the students and faculty at Ferris State University have received these modules.

Presenter: Dr. Clifton Franklund, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Ferris State University

Creating Clinical Case-based Activities/Lessons from a Template

The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio is using case-based learning activities to attempt to improve student satisfaction and learning outcomes for nearly-graduated medical students.

Traditionally faculty distribute case scenarios in a handout-lecture-question/answer cycle. They have wanted and needed to transform the cases into more engaging learning activities for individuals and groups, incorporating decision-making, feedback, self-assessment, and reflection. But the faculty’s challenging teaching/clinical course load limited time to accomplish this.

The task for an instructional designer: develop a simple-to-use template for turning existing cases into engaging activities. And the solution: use SoftChalk to build the template faculty can adapt to their needs.

During this session you will see the template they created plus samples of the case-based activities in three specialties.  In addition they will discuss both student and faculty satisfaction with the process.

Presented by: Bonnie Taylor, M.Ed., CAPM, Educational Development Specialist,Online Teaching and Learning, UT Health Science Center San Antonio.

MISSION SoftChalk: Secret Agents, Online Gaming and SoftChalk Training

Canisius College wanted to come up with an innovative, engaging, and custom way to train faculty to use SoftChalk. MISSION SoftChalk is based on the popular online game, Urgent Evoke. Participants enroll as agents and have to complete a series of missions and quests, present evidence, and engage with other agents and their leader. This presentation will walk you through their process for setting up MISSION SoftChalk in their LMS, the missions that agents encounter, and show you how to create a training game that can include both synchronous and asynchronous components.

Presented by: Leah MacVie, Instructional Designer, Canisius College

Harnessing the Power of Web 2.0: Combining SoftChalk and Free Digital Technologies to Enhance Learning Landscapes

Learn how James May, the Association of Florida Colleges’ Professor of the Year for 2010, uses Web2.0 services and applications along with SoftChalk.

YouTube, Google Docs, VoiceThread, ScreenJelly, Prezi and others are engaging, powerful tools that, when combined with SoftChalk, change learning landscapes. In this presentation learn how to harness the power of a variety of FREE and Easy-to-Use applications. With respect to content development, learn to utilize tools to analyze text, identify key vocabulary, and enhance reading. Heighten content delivery with multimedia widgets and incorporate your own voice and your own videos made with Prezi, ScreenJelly, and YouTube. Enhance student interaction with VoiceThread by enabling students to text, talk, or video comment in threaded discussions. Expand formative assessments by embedding Google forms. Moreover, take home a link to a SoftChalk module that showcases all of these tools and resources.

Presented by: Dr. James S. May, Professor of English as a Second Language, Valencia Community College

February 2011

Technology and Sports: Reinforcing Learning Off the Practice Field

Though not taking the place of the physical daily practice sessions, conditioning and playing the game itself, online and in-class technologies reinforce and enhance the players understanding of the scientific and tactical concepts by allowing them to review, question and assimilate different aspects on their own. In that process the coach saves valuable in-person time and resources but still keeps in contact with the players in and out of season.

This presentation will show how SoftChalk and other media programs and software can promote and enhance a college athletic program’s profile, coaching, education (in this case mens soccer) and efficiency. The presenter will introduce how the idea was born moving through its genesis to topics such as the off-season, preseason, and in season; as well as player expectations and game reviews. And in the process also integrates them into the technology and environmental mission statement of the school.

Presented by: Desmond Lawless, Head Men’s Soccer Coach/Department of Kinesiology, Shenandoah University

January 2011

Creating Accessible Lessons for Students with Disabilities Using SoftChalk

Jane Jarrow, Principal of DCCOL – Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning discusses how SoftChalk provides both the support and the mechanisms to insure that online lessons are accessible to all students, including those with disabilities, from the start. A series of questions are addressed:

• Why are we having this conversation? (What are the legal mandates that require access to online learning opportunities? Is just having the right technology enough?)
• How can I tell whether my lesson is fully accessible? (How does a review of the functional limitations created by disability help to guide the creation of accessible lessons?)
• How does SoftChalk make it possible/easy/fast to take control and construct an accessible lesson from the start? (What tools are built into SoftChalk’s that allow me to build in accessibility?)
• Where can I get more information? (What’s this about a virtual open house to explore a new resource regarding accessibility of online learning?)

February 2010

The Importance of Learning Style Pathways

Trifilo discusses the results of her study which shows a significant improvement in both learning and satisfaction for learners who followed a pathway that matched their learning styles – then demonstrate possible ways to incorporate instructional strategies, based on these pathways, into lessons using SoftChalk.

Teaching Educators How to Teach Online Using SoftChalk Lessons

Through a series of online classes and workshops, Broward College has realized their need to properly train and certify educators that do online teaching. During the presentation you will see demonstrations of the content Broward has created using SoftChalk and how they provide the necessary professional development to educators wishing to teach online.

Modernizing Student Orientations – Making them Interactive and Measurable

This 5 minute presentation by Erich Hochmeister of Edison College Online describes how they solved the communication hurdle for first time online students. How were students going to learn how to use the Learning Management System? How do instructors measure if students are accessing the materials and grasping the concepts?

The answer: incorporating the media with Soft Chalk. SoftChalk provides an easy to edit orientation module complete with the ability to embed the many interactive flash activities that the college created. The result: A modern, interactive, and measurable orientation module.

May 2009

Design Principles, and examples, for Creating Multimedia Tutorials

Ten years ago only those with special skills were able to design computer-based or web-based instruction. Today, almost any subject matter expert can find an authoring tool that suits their skill level. Although exciting, effective instruction starts with sound instructional design principles – principles that should be the foundation of any type of online instruction.

In this presentation Martha M. Snyder, Ph.D. of Nova Southeastern University
and Becky Whittemore, M.P.H., M.N., B.S.N. of Oregon Health and Science University will address the question “what is effective instruction” through one very popular web-based instructional method – the tutorial. Participants will learn what a tutorial is, when to use a tutorial over another method of instruction, and how to structure and sequence a tutorial. An engaging and effective web-based tutorial designed using SoftChalk will be presented.

December 2010

Teacher Education Students Embrace the Universal Design for Learning Principles

Diane Painter shows how students in teacher education preparation programs at Shenandoah University are learning to use Thinkfinity resources with SoftChalk to develop K-12 lessons that embrace the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. This initiative teaches education interns how they can easily and quickly create lessons that enable them to present content information in many different ways and actively engage their students in a variety of online activities. The teaching interns include a variety of interactive activities in their lessons that allow them to monitor student progress while determining what the student knows.

The presenter will begin with an overview of Verizon Foundation’s Thinkfinity.org website and its many different teaching resources such as lesson plans and student interactives that are aligned to state and national standards. Then the presenter will share some of the lessons that have been created for both direct instruction as well as independent learning.

Creating Lessons for the 21st Century Skills Framework using SoftChalk- Hampton City Schools

Hampton City Schools is creating a Model Technology Classroom in which exemplary teachers collaborate with the Instructional Technology Resource Teacher and Teacher Librarian. Together they integrate technology into their teaching strategies and model a learning environment based upon the national 21st Century Skills Framework. In this session a model team will share professional development activities showing how to use SoftChalk as a tool for creating i-21 lessons that correlate with Curriculum Pacing guides. They will also demonstrate how teachers access these lesson plans, models and activities through their Learning Management System.

November 2008

Getting a Jump-Start: Re-purpose Publisher Content, Add your Own

Malissa Attebery, an Instructional Designer at Lone Star College shows how a small group of designers can create a thousand online courses! In this online presentation you will see three examples:

1. Converting e-packs : a Psych course from a Cengage ePack;
2. Making e-textbooks interactive: combing learning objects from McGraw-Hill and instructor e-texts;
3. Student Orientations: a MathLab orientation from Pearson.

You will see how you can combine publisher and instructor content, and how SoftChalk makes it easy to chunk the information to make reading and interacting with the content more manageable for learners. And with the ability to add images, multimedia, and various activities the content comes alive.

October 2010

Migrating from PowerPoint: You CAN make your Online Teaching more Engaging and Interactive

As educators, we know that the best way to reach our students is with the use of interactive and engaging strategies. However, our online students are often inundated with PowerPoint presentations that carry little more than illustrated bullet points. Busy faculty members are understandably reluctant to devote a great deal of time to learn how to produce more dynamic online content – including multimedia.

Join us in this session as we demonstrate just how easy it is to take an existing PowerPoint and turn it into web content for training or teaching with built-in navigation, interactive activities, accessibility compliance, and professionally-produced streaming video clips. The presentation will describe the use of SoftChalk and INTELECOM as resources for accomplishing this migration.

Presented by: Deborah Kell, Dean of Instructional Systems and Institutional Effectiveness, Mercer County Community College

September 2010

Accommodating Other Students with Disabilities: Beyond the Need for Screen Readers

Jane Jarrow, Principal of DCCOL – Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning discusses how when we speak of accommodating students with disabilities in online classes, our first thoughts always turn to the highly text-based nature of online learning and making sure that students who are blind/visually impaired, or those who are dyslexic, have an alternative means of accessing material that other students will read on their screen. But there are other online learners with disabilities who can also benefit from careful prior planning and innovative implementation by instructors. This session will discuss the needs of – and solutions for – students who are deaf/hard of hearing, those with significant physical disabilities, and students with attention problems. Explore the pros and cons of transcripts v. captioning, learn more about how and why students with mobility impairments sometimes struggle in an online environment, and discover how the organization of your class may impact on how it is received and processed.

Presented by: Jane Jarrow, Principal of DCCOL – Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning

July 2010

SIRIUS – Interactive Content (with avatars!) for a National Audience

SIRIUS, a Florida State College at Jacksonville strategic business unit, provides materials in two areas:

First, it provides online faculty development programs that help faculty become proficient in creating and teaching interactive, online and hybrid courses.
Secondly, the project develops and provides general education credit courses nationally that are highly interactive and creative for face-to-face, hybrid, and fully online learning.

SIRIUS courses are developed by faculty teams and designed with the latest customized learning technology tools including avatars, custom character development, and an abundance of multimedia and interactive learning tools. These courses are already being used nationally by a number of institutions.

SIRIUS is also supported by Project DELTA, a recent $728,000 FIPSE grant awarded to facilitate the dissemination of the faculty development program and beta testing of the SIRIUS courses throughout higher education. SIRIUS is looking for colleges whose faculty are interested in participating in this higher education consortium to test these courses.

May 2010

e-Notes: Integrating Course Content with SoftChalk

e-Notes combine the picture viewing capabilities of PowerPoint Presenter, the text constructing capabilities of Microsoft Word, and the media deposition capabilities of a Learning Management System (in this case, WebCT/Bb VISTA). To make this easy Derek Weber, Department of Biology, Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey uses SoftChalk.

These e-Notes include a chapter summary with embedded images and hyperlinks and related videos/animations hosted by sites like YouTube. Also embedded are instructor-developed virtual lectures that simulate a traditional lecture. At the end of e-Notes, students are able to assess their learning using instructor designed quiz poppers. Using this strategy, instructors can truly build a course that streamlines their material and provides a personal touch that is often lacking in online courses.

April 2010

Training Educators to Build Courses that Meet Quality Matters Standards – Part III

Julie Magadan of Phoenix College shares the engagement portion of the presentation, which highlights the collaboration of three colleges that developed and implemented a training series to provide professional development to faculty who wanted to develop online or hybrid courses per Quality Matters (QM) standards. The four part training series used SoftChalk and other practices to provide information on the QM rubric while modeling best practices aligned with the QM standards.

The presenters will demonstrate the lessons created with SoftChalk, provide information on why they chose SoftChalk, how they organized and developed the modules, as well as information on how the training was received.

Training Educators to Build Courses that Meet Quality Matters Standards – Part II

Laura Ballard of GateWay Community College shares the assessment portion of the presentation, which highlights the collaboration of three colleges that developed and implemented a training series to provide professional development to faculty who wanted to develop online or hybrid courses per Quality Matters (QM) standards. The four part training series used SoftChalk and other practices to provide information on the QM rubric while modeling best practices aligned with the QM standards.

The presenters will demonstrate the lessons created with SoftChalk, provide information on why they chose SoftChalk, how they organized and developed the modules, as well as information on how the training was received.

Training Educators to Build Courses that Meet Quality Matters Standards – Part I

Lisa Young of Scottsdale Community College shares an overview of the presentation, which highlights the collaboration of three colleges that developed and implemented a training series to provide professional development to faculty who wanted to develop online or hybrid courses per Quality Matters (QM) standards. The four part training series used SoftChalk LessonBuilder and other practices to provide information on the QM rubric while modeling best practices aligned with the QM standards.

The presenters will demonstrate the lessons created with SoftChalk, provide information on why they chose SoftChalk, how they organized and developed the modules, as well as information on how the training was received.

Promoting Higher Level Thinking Skills: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy with SoftChalk (Part 2)

Lyn Hawks, Coordinator of Independent Learning at Duke University TIP, shows how SoftChalk can be used to ensure that students are thinking at their highest level. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a familiar framework for educators as they help students explore levels of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. Lyn demonstrates 2 lessons – Science (Genetics) and Math (Numbers and Secret Codes) – to demonstrate how SoftChalk is used to achieve the goal of creating higher level thinking skills.

Presented by: Lyn Hawks, Coordinator of Independent Learning at Duke University TIP

Promoting Higher Level Thinking Skills: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy with SoftChalk (Part 1)

Lyn Hawks, Coordinator of Independent Learning at Duke University TIP, shows how SoftChalk can be used to ensure that students are thinking at their highest level. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a familiar framework for educators as they help students explore levels of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. Lyn demonstrates 4 lessons – Social Studies (Greek Mythology), Language Arts (The Writers Journey), Science (Genetics) and Math (Numbers and Secret Codes)- to demonstrate how SoftChalk is used to achieve the goal of creating higher level thinking skills.

Creating interactive Math Lessons for Online, Hybrid, and Traditional Courses

Marilyn shows how you can use SoftChalk to ensure that students are actively engaged in the learning process. Marilyn shows how SoftChalk has provided an easy-to-use platform to design visually appealing, interactive and engaging lessons to meet all learning styles. You will see almost all of what SoftChalk has to offer in ways of activities, text poppers, hyperlinks, quiz ideas and tables. The lesson also demonstrates the effective integration of third party media. While the content is math, all disciplines will benefit from this presentation.

Presented by: Marilyn Larsen, College of the Mainland

A Complete Media Package: Integrating Textbook and Ancillary Materials (Part 2)

Dr. Marie Maness, professor of Nutrition and Fitness at Brookhaven College and full-time online instructor, initially uses a Course Tour developed in SoftChalk to introduce student to her online course. She shows how her fitness students’ ability to record their workouts was vastly improved by an interactive workout log created with SoftChalk. Her completed lessons incorporate images, quick time videos, PowerPoint presentations, audio, and links to the Internet. She uses SoftChalk to deliver a complete media package to her students.

September 2008

A Complete Media Package: Integrating Textbook and Ancillary Materials (Part 1)

Dr. Marie Maness, professor of Nutrition and Fitness at Brookhaven College and full-time online instructor, initially uses a Course Tour developed in SoftChalk to introduce student to her online course. She shows the use of “Chapter Reviews” to reinforce learning objectives with SoftChalk self-test activities. Her completed lessons incorporate images, quick time videos, PowerPoint presentations, audio, and links to the Internet. She uses SoftChalk to deliver a complete media package to her students.

September 2008

Readers and Scanners – How SoftChalk Enhances Diverse Learning Styles- Stephen Holland

Stephen Holland, chair of the English Department at Muscatine Community College, shows how designing content for online students with different learning and reading styles can be compared to the concept of newspaper layout where there are both ‘readers’ and ‘scanners’. Using SoftChalk features such as links, sidebars, text poppers, and activities enables students to move through the lessons the way they want – and still comprehend the key points.

August 2009

Telling Stories to Teach Well: How SoftChalk Can Help

How does storytelling make academics better? Using narrative, characters, and case studies, Duke University Talent Identification program creates lessons for gifted K-12 students using images, audio, slide shows, hyper-linked handouts, quizzes, and various other resources. Learn how critical thinking challenges students when they are immersed in story and asked to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize.

See mathematics, language arts, and science lessons that engage students in academically rigorous scenarios. Learn how SoftChalk aids instructors in developing creative and artful lessons that don’t feel like instruction.

Presented by: Lyn Hawks, Coordinator of Independent Learning at Duke University TIP