Soft Chalk program for lesson plans

This was an assignment that seemed simple, but proved full of potholes. I was to make a lesson plan using the demonstration version of Soft Chalk. A link was provided to their website so that I could download the free version.

The website proved to be a dead site, and from the discussion board of the class, no one was able to get into it. From previous experience, I Googled Soft Chalk, which brought me to a live website where the link to the free software was active. In the past, I have found that some of these companies do wholesale changes in their websites and discard the old web pages instead of updating them, so if a link fails, I always attempt googling the company's name to see if this is the case. In the case of Soft Chalk, it proved to be so.

Now, for Soft Chalk. I have used Microsoft Word and MS Publisher to do lesson plans, and have been advised from the start of my FSU Education courses that I should stick to basic lesson plans that do not elaborate much. For elaboration, I should provide notes to be used for each lesson on separate pages, and these can be updated and changed as necessary. It is a fairly fast process the way I do it now.

Soft Chalk proved anything but fast. It starts as a tedious process, and if you do only one lesson plan, you do not get the full value of this program. It is much faster to do a lesson plan in Word than in Soft Chalk.

However, if you do two lesson plans in Soft Chalk, you begin to see the real value of the program. It's strength is not in making a single lesson plan; it's strength is doing everything else needed for a unit after making more than 1 lesson plan.

Soft Chalk will do quizzes, tests, and everything else that is usually time intensive for a teacher. Once you get the daily information inputted, it takes care of the rest. The quiz section is a joy, allowing you to choose the types of questions and the answers you will accept. Once you put in the first lesson plan, it is a snap to continue to scaffold a unit's learning through the next dozen or so lessons, then add quizzes and tests and print out notes for lecture. By the time I reached my third lesson plan, I had gone from a critic to an absolute fan. This is a good program.

Do not be put off by the relatively steep learning curve or the time it takes to get started. By the time you reach the third lesson plan, you will be a veteran of the software and you will be amazed at the overall time it can save you. I will recommend this software without hesitation to anyone with a desire to do a good job while cutting valuable time. You won't see it on your first lesson, but you will afterward. The only real problem with the software is that it is relatively expensive to purchase the full version, but if your school provides it, you should consider using it.