[Using Sakai] SoftChalk and Sakai integration - beta available

[Ed Garay]

Greetings from Chicago.

Allow me to jump in to say that we license SoftChalk LessonBuilder for the 
entire faculty and teaching staff at our school (University of Illinois at 
Chicago) and a large portion of our 4,400 UIC instructors simply love it.

SoftChalk is essentially an easy-to-use yet powerful authoring tool 
(Windows and Mac) for instructors to create simple, intermediate and even 
advanced (and interactive) class materials for Web delivery.  Each 
SoftChalk lesson can have simple hypermedia or one embedding Flash Video, 
MP3 Podcasts and/or simple to complex interactive student activities or 
embedded quizzing.

For each lesson, SoftChalk produces a folder, which can be easily zip up 
and uploaded to Blackboard (UIC's LMS at this time), or Sakai, 
Desire2Learn, Moodle or uploaded to anywhere.  Why, you can put burn it to 
CDs, if you wish.  At UIC, we recommend that faculty drag-and-drop their 
SoftChalk-generated lessons to their class WebDisks (WebDAV mount points) 
which we have seamlessly integrated with the rest of the Blackboard LMS.

Now, when/if the instructors want to capture/record the student activities 
embedded inside a SoftChalk lesson, only then it is really necessary to 
have SoftChalk package the lesson as a SCORM package that must be uploaded 
to Blackboard for proper integration with the Blackboard Grade Center.  The 
same would be true to feed the SoftChalk student interactions to the Sakai 
Gradebook.

With SoftChalk Release 5, SoftChalk has made available an additional 
LMS-specific integration simplifying the two-step process of packaging the 
lesson to Zip or SCORM and then uploading it to the LMS, into a single 
operation where the instructors or course builders publish their lessons 
directly from SoftChalk to Blackboard, Sakai, Moodle, etc. -- a nice (free) 
feature appreciated mostly by mere mortals (i.e. nontech-savvy faculty).

At UIC and many other universities, SoftChalk is very well liked, just like 
Wimba Classroom and Wimba Voice Tools, Pronto, and a plethora of other 
peripheral Teaching & Learning Technology.

I hope you find this information useful.

Regards,

--- Ed Garay, UIC

At Wednesday 10/28/2009 12:38 PM, Mark Norton wrote:
>Support is also provided for SCORM using the UC David 2004ed3 player.
>
>- Mark Norton
>
>Ricci, Margaret P wrote:
> > Yes, SoftChalk has basically put Sakai on its list of LMSs that it will 
> talk to.  The problem with SoftChalk is that it produces a whole web page 
> with all sorts of files.  Uploading all of those to Sakai is a herculean 
> task if you do them individually, and there are still plenty of people 
> who look at me as if I have 3 heads when I say WebDAV.  The SoftChalk 
> interface basically lets you upload the whole thing with about 3 clicks 
> total.  I've been testing it since Boston - it's almost there.
> >
> > Maggie
> >
> >
> > Margaret P. Ricci
> > Instructional Technology Consultant
> > Teaching and Learning Technologies Centers
> > Indiana University
> > 812-855-8355
> > mricci at indiana.edu
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: sakai-user-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org 
> [mailto:sakai-user-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Pieter 
> Hartsook
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 1:27 PM
> > To: sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org
> > Subject: [Using Sakai] SoftChalk and Sakai integration - beta available
> >
> > I received this notification from SoftChalk and thought it might be of
> > interest to folks on the Sakai-User list.
> >
> > Pieter Hartsook
> > Sakai Foundation Communications Manager
> > ==============
> >
> > Be first to review.SoftChalk v5 and Sakai Integration
> >
> > The SoftChalk /Sakai integration is nearing the official release date
> > and SoftChalk invites you to be the first to gain access to the new
> > and exciting features.
> >
> > Soon you will be able to easily create engaging, interactive content
> > for your Sakai Course with SoftChalk!!
> >
> >     * Configure SoftChalk and publish your SoftChalk lessons directly 
> into Sakai
> >    * Easily publish your lesson content to more than one site
> >    * Re-open, edit and save changes to lessons previously published to 
> Sakai
> >
> > To participate in the Beta Test and review send an email request to:
> > shelia at softchalk.com
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--
-- Ed Garay  ITL Blog: www.accc.uic.edu/itl/blog
    Assistant Director for Academic Computing

    UIC Academic Computing and Communications Center
    ACCC Instructional Technology Lab (ITL)
    www.accc.uic.edu/itl

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