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I just created my SoftChalk Cloud account. Now what do I do?

I just created my SoftChalk Cloud account. Now what do I do?

Owned by Carol SoftChalk
Last updated: Sept 25, 2023
8 min read

Congratulations on creating your SoftChalk Cloud account! You are now ready to create content.

Create Your First SoftChalk Lesson

Below are instructions to create a simple three page lesson with an activity, a quiz popper question, and an embedded YouTube video.

  1. Login to SoftChalk Cloud with your username and password.

  2. From the SoftChalk Cloud menus, choose My Content and then Lessons to display the Lessons Folder view.

  3. From the Actions menu, choose Create Lesson.


    This will open Create Online, and you will be ready to start creating a SoftChalk lesson.

  1. SoftChalk Create Online works like a word processing program. Simply type your lesson information into the text area of SoftChalk Create Online. You may also copy and paste into the editor from a Microsoft Word document or other source.

  2. Use the toolbar to apply formatting (bold, italic, headings) and insert bullets, tables, hyperlinks, images, etc.
    Each of these features work in a similar way to standard word processing programs.

If you have a lot of content in your lesson, you may want to insert page breaks to “chunk” your content into multiple pages (rather than delivering all of your content in a single lesson page).

  1. In the main editing window, place your cursor in the text where you’d like the page to break, then hit your Enter or Return key to create a new paragraph.

  2. Go to the Toolbar and click the Page Break icon.

     

  1. Name your lesson by typing into the dialog at the top of the editing window:

  2. Save your lesson by clicking the Save icon on the toolbar:

  3. Preview your lesson by clicking the Preview icon on the toolbar.

Your lesson will open in a new tab or a new window in your browser. Note that your lesson editing session will remain open as well. Once you’ve previewed your lesson, you can close the preview window and continue editing your lesson.

SoftChalk lessons are web pages that contain standard HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and media. Students will view your lessons using any standard web browser.

When you first create a lesson, it has a default Theme and Layout. It’s easy to change the
look-and-feel of your lesson – simply select a different “Theme” or “Layout”.

  1. From the Toolbar, click on the Properties icon and then select Theme.

  2. With the Theme dialog open, choose a theme from the options available in the drop-down menu at the top of the dialog. Create Online allows you to select from a variety of color-based theme options.

  3. Additionally, you may also enter a lesson title and subtitle, choose a layout, and make other selections by clicking the Properties icon on the toolbar and making selections for Title & Layout, Overview Page, and Sidebar.

  4. Once you have made your selections, you will return to the main editing window.

  5. To view the changes and see your lesson the way a student will see it, save your lesson, and click the Preview button on the toolbar.

Activities are great way to include formative assessment and feedback for your student.

Some activities can be scored, like a quiz question. Other activities are “information presentation” style activities. See the full list of Sample Interactives.

  1. From the Toolbar, click the Activity icon.

  2. There are a variety of activities that you can customize and insert into your lesson.

  3. Make a selection to open the activity editing dialog.
    Note the How To option at the top of the dialog, which is available on all activities. You can view an example of the activity and a short video showing how to create the activity.

Let’s say you want to have students identify the lobes of the brain. For this, you might use the Labeling Activity.

  1. In the Labeling Activity Editor, click the Select File button to add an image.
    You can insert a local image file from your computer, an image file saved in your SoftChalk Cloud Files area, or add an image using a URL to the image.

2. You can then adjust other options such as the line width, line color, or add a margin around your image to allow more room for label placeholders. (optional)

3. In the Labeling Activity Editor, click the ‘plus’ icon to create a new label placeholder.

4. The placeholder will appear in the top-left corner. Click and drag the 4-way arrow icon next to the placeholder to move the label placeholder.

5. Click on the circle of the label line and drag to identify the location on the image the placeholder is representing.

6. In the placeholder, type the title and alternative text for the label. The label and alternative text can be read by screen readers.

7. Continue to create labels until all desired labels have been created.

8. You can also choose to make this a scored activity by adding a point value, allow students to retry the activity or hear feedback sounds.(optional)

9. When finished, click the OK button at the top of the activity editor dialog to save your activity. It will be embedded or linked into your lesson page.

To view the activity in your lesson the way a student will see it, save your lesson, and click the Preview button on the toolbar.

In the main editing window, hit your Enter or Return key to create a new paragraph after the activity and continue adding additional content to your lesson.

Adding self-check quiz questions to your lesson is a great way to include formative assessment and student feedback into your lesson. You can insert individual quiz questions anywhere in your lesson to provide your students a way to self-check their understanding of concepts as they progress thru the lesson. See the full list of Sample Interactives.

  1. From the Toolbar, click the QuizPopper icon.

  2. There are a variety of activities that you can customize and insert into your lesson.

Let’s create a Multiple Choice quiz popper to get a quick assessment of the information in the lesson.

  1. From the QuizPopper options that appear, choose Multiple Choice for this example.

  2. Type a question or instructions. At the bottom, enter 10 for the points.

  3. Click the Answers tab. Enter your answers and individual feedback (optional).

  4. To add another answer, click Add Answer.

  5. In the correct column at the left, select the correct answer.

  6. Click the Display tab at the top. Notice you have three options for how the question will be viewed by the student. The default is Embed in lesson page.

  7. Click OK to save your quiz question into your lesson.

  8. Back in the main editing window, you will see a ‘placeholder’ image that represents the location of the Multiple Choice quiz popper in your lesson page.
    If you need to make changes to the activity, you can double-click on the placeholder image and the quizpopper editor will reopen for editing.

  9. To view the quiz in your lesson the way a student will see it, save your lesson and click the Preview button on the toolbar

You can add videos into your lesson from any source. Videos can be linked or embedded into the lesson page. Below is an example for embedding a YouTube video.

  1. On the toolbar, click the Widget icon.

  2. To insert a YouTube video, paste any YouTube video embed code into the ‘Widget HTML’ field.

  3. You may also add a name and description of your video as shown below. (You’ll notice a ‘keyhole’ icon that contains the video description and can be read by screen readers.) Click the OK button to save the video into your lesson page.

  4. In your main editing window, you will see the embedded video appear in the lesson content.
    To edit the video you just created, double click the placeholder to open the editing window for the video.

  5. To view the video in your lesson the way a student will see it, save your lesson, and click the Preview button on the toolbar.

When you have finished editing your lesson, you can exit Create Online by clicking on either the Home link or the Folder link at the top of the Create Online window.

  • Click the Home link to exit and return to the SoftChalk Cloud Home page.

  • Click the Folder Name (e.g., Lessons) to exit and return to the lesson list page

Congratulations! You have created your first SoftChalk lesson.

In your SoftChalk Cloud account, you will see the lesson title listed in the correct folder under My Content>Lessons menu.

Click on the lesson title to view a preview of the content, the LTI and Hyperlinks, and additional lesson details.

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