PowerPoint presentations can be saved for use in the Blackboard course management system without the need for RealPresenter. PowerPoint has an option to save your presentation as a web page; however, using the default settings will produce a document that can only be viewed in Internet Explorer 5 or higher. This document outlines how to save your presentations for use with both Netscape Navigator and IE and then import them into your Blackboard course.
Step One – Create your PowerPoint Presentation
Step Two – Select Save as Web Page from the File menu, as shown below.
Step Three - This brings up the following dialog box, where you will specify the HTML document name and the select the Publish… button. Make sure to specify a new folder with a matching title that currently has no files in it. Saving a PowerPoint presentation as a web page generates many files, and keeping them together is of utmost importance.
Step Four - The dialog below appears after selecting the Publish… button.
In this dialog box you will want to select the slides you wish to publish (in this case the entire presentation) and select your Browser support options. Click the radio button that says All browser listed above (creates larger files). This will ensure that users of Netscape 3 and later as well as earlier versions of IE will be able to view your presentation
Step Five – Now select the Web Options… button highlighted below.
Step Six – Make sure to unselect Organize supporting files in a folder. While this option creates an html file and supporting folder, Blackboard will not properly resolve the links resulting in an error when trying to browse.
Select OK which will take you back to the previous screen and select the Publish button in the lower right hand corner.
Step Seven
– Create a single .zip file from the resulting files after you have saved.
To create a .zip file, you must have a zip software, such as WinZip®, installed
on your computer. WinZip® is available on the campus network. There are
also free zip programs that can be downloaded off the Internet. Check http://www.tucows.com
for free downloads.
To add files to WinZip®, select Add from the Actions pull-down menu or click the Add toolbar button. In the Add dialog box, select the files you want to add to the archive. The easiest way to do this is usually to click on the desired files in the list near the top of the Add dialog box. You can select multiple files using normal Windows file selection conventions (for example, hold down the shift key while clicking to select multiple files).
Once you are done making your file selection, click the Add button to add the files. Once WinZip® finishes, it will update the file list in the main window to reflect the new files in the archive. You can also add files to an archive by dragging the files from My Computer or Windows Explorer and dropping them on the WinZip window. (Copyright © 1991-2000 by WinZip Computing, Inc. All rights reserved.)
Step Eight – Upload this single .zip file to Blackboard using the Item Attachments and select the Special Action: Unpackage this file as shown below.
