News

SoftChalk V5 Integrates Online Content Creation

• By David Nagel
• 05/27/09

Ed tech developer SoftChalk has released SoftChalk V5, an update to the company's authoring suite for instructional content.

SoftChalk is an and interactive content authoring and instructional materials authoring tool for K-12 and higher education. It's designed to let instructors create and edit e-learning content on the Web with no HTML or other programming knowledge required. It includes built-in style sheets for page navigation, layout, and other design elements and automatically packages the content for use in a learning management system or other delivery medium.

The new version 5 adds an enhanced digital repository, with the ability to perform searches across multiple repositories, including outside repositories, such as YouTube. It also adds new Web 2.0 features, including the ability to use blogs, polls, surveys, wikis, and video via widgets.

Other new features include:

A new eCourseBuilder tool for combining lessons into "eCourse modules," with the ability to carry scores and other information over from lesson to lesson;

• Direct publishing to Blackboard;
• A new photo album;
• A quiz group function;
• Table of contents capabilities; and
• New accessibility options.

"I found that the improvements are significant," said Rick Hubbard, Media Specialist at Palm Beach Atlantic University, in a prepared statement. Hubbard beta tested the latest release. "The nesting of lessons into a course makes it easy to keep all material on a subject together in a nice organized way. It is also valuable to have the ability to create your own library of items to share with others or to save for other uses. PBAU has a site license with gold support so we are very excited for the release."

SoftChalk V5 is available now. Further information can be found here.