Embedding Audio, Video and News in Blackboard

How to Embed Audio content

1. Make sure you have your sound clip saved to your computer
2. Log into Blackboard and proceed to your course site
3. Click the Control Panel link
4. Click the Course Documents button under the Content Areas heading
5. Click the button and give the sound clip a title
6. Click the Browse button and locate your sound file
7. Click the Submit button

How to Embed Video content

Adding embedded video to a webpage is a great way to make your site more dynamic and interesting. Fortunately, many video sites allow you to link directly to their content from within your website. This example will use the popular video site YouTube, but you may find several others that allow you to perform the same action.

1. Find the video you wish to embed on your Blackboard site.
2. On the right side, you will see the word embed and a text field with code (pictured)
3. Highlight the code and copy it (CTRL + C on PC or Apple Key + C on Macintosh)
4. Log into Blackboard and proceed to your course site
5. Click the Control Panel link
6. Click the Course Documents button under the Content Areas heading
7. Click the button, and enter a title for your video
8. Click the button to toggle between text and html code
9. Paste the code you copied from YouTube
10. Click Submit

Here are some links to video resources:

TED
YouTube
Google Video

How to Embed RSS News Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is a way to display current digital news from frequently-updated web sites and weblogs. It simplifies the use of the web by allowing you to stay current on sites you frequently visit by not having to actually visit that site and compiling all of your favorite news in one location.  On web pages, RSS feeds are typically linked with the word Subscribe, an orange square , or a rectangle with the letters or . After clicking on one of these icons, the RSS news feed page for the web site will be displayed.

Examples of some sites that offer RSS feeds are: CNN.com, ESPN.com, and the Chronicle of Higher Education site.  Typically users can use Internet Explorer and FireFox or web services such as Yahoo or Google to subscribe to RSS feeds.  This works well for your own personal use, but getting your students to individually subscribe to course-relevant RSS news feeds is another story.  However, by visiting http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/build.php and entering the URL of a RSS feed site, you can generate a section of JavaScript code to add into a Blackboard site of your choice so that the external news content is dynamically displayed and updated right in Blackboard.

The program that is run on this website is called Feed2JS (Feed to JavaScript), and it allows the user to customize the RSS feed being displayed in your Blackboard site.  Options include how many articles to display at a time, whether to show descriptions of the articles, and whether or not to open the article link in a new window. 

To add the code into a Blackboard document, use the following directions:

1. Find the web page address of the RSS feed you wish to add (see first paragraph above). Highlight and copy the RSS web site address
2. Go to http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/build.php
3. Paste the RSS web site address into the URL field (see right image)
4. Select from the various options offered (see right image and paragraph three above) and click the Generate JavaScript button
5. Copy the entire section of code that appears
6. Log into Blackboard and proceed to your course site
7. Click the Control Panel link
8. Click the Course Documents button under the Content Areas heading
9. Click the button
10. Give your folder a title, such as RSS Feed, and click Submit
11. Click OK and then click the link to your RSS Feed folder
12. Click the button, and enter a title for your feed (such as the title of the web site with the RSS feed)
13. Click the button to toggle between text and html code
14. Paste the JavaScript code you copied from the Feed2JS page into the HTML text box
15. Click Submit, and your feed is complete

Resources:
http://www.whatisrss.com/
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/intro/
http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/build.php

To learn more about using RSS feeds in Blackboard, please contact the Teaching and Technology Center at 508.531.2634 or ttc@bridgew.edu.