This guide covers:

  • Sign up for a SoftChalk Cloud account
    License information
  • Download software
  • Open the editor

Sign up for a SoftChalk Cloud account

  • Request a 14-day free trial here
  • Fill in the form using your university email address. You will receive an email with a 14-day trial activation key
  • Go to https://www.softchalkcloud.com/join and fill in the form with your trial activation key. Use your university username (e.g. mfbx9alp) and use http://online.manchester.ac.uk as the organisation website URL

Your cloud account stores all of your published lessons and grades. Once you save a lesson to the cloud, it will appear under My Content > Lessons. Grades and scores are accessed via the ScoreCenter tab (more on this in the tracking scores section).

Softchalk cloud tabs
License information

Please use your trial license to explore the software and decide whether it is suitable for your teaching. Once you have decided to use SoftChalk, you can get a full license by filling in the form towards the bottom of the main SoftChalk page.

Download software

On a personal machine

Go to Create 11 Cloud Installation and follow the instructions.

On a university-managed machine

  • Go to the IT Services Software Centre
  • Download and install a Java update first to make sure you have the most recent version (Java SE Runtime Environment – see screenshot below)
  • Download SoftChalk Create. If you have any issues with the installation, please contact IT Services

Open the editor

To open the editor:

  • Log into your Softchalk Cloud account and choose My Content > Create Content from the menu at the top
  • OR double-click the SoftChalk Create icon on your desktop or in your applications folder
  • Sign in with your SoftChalk Cloud account details that you have just made (you will only have to do this once on each machine)
  • It may prompt you to install version updates upon opening, it is always advised that you do this

Once opened, your blank editor will look like the image below (the very top menu may vary on Windows vs Mac machines). If you have reached this point, you are now ready to start creating. Go back to the main SoftChalk page and choose one of the guides to begin.