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Ingredients

1 – Computer with access to the Internet

1 – Instructor access to a Blackboard course (the screencast features BB Enterprise 8 )

1 – Optional – Accounts with YouTube and SlideShare to upload your own videos and presentations

Directions

1. You will need to obtain the “Embed code” from individual video pages from YouTube, or from individual presentation pages at SlideShare.net. On the web page that contains the media, next to each video or presentation is a field labeled “Embed Code”. That code is easily copied, and then can be pasted into the appropriate web page, blog, or Blackboard content area.
2. From the Control Panel, navigate to the area in your Blackboard course where you would like to place the RSS information.
3. Click on the Add (+) Item button to create a new content item.
4. Provide a name for the content item (required)
5. In the Text editor click on the “Toggle HTML Source Mode” button
6. Paste the Embed code from the YouTube video page or SlideShare page into the text field (you can overwrite anything that is initially in the text field)
7. Click on the Submit button

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Watch a screencast for this recipe.

Ingredients

1 – Powerpoint program (any recent versions) – note: this is for Windows users.

1 – Internet Connection

1 – Firefox web browser (preferred)

1 – Video Download Helper Firefox Add-on (plug-in)

1 – WinFF program

Directions

1. Open the Firefox web browser. Make sure you have established a connection to the Internet.
2. If you haven’t already, navigate to the Mozilla Addons page for the Video Download Helper.
3. Click the button labeled “Add to Firefox”
4. A software installation window will appear. Click the “Install Now” button.
5. You’ll need to restart Firefox in order for the Add-on to work.
6. Find an appropriate video at the YouTube site (this add-on will work with several other video sites as well.
7. The red, yellow, and blue “molecule” in the Firefox toolbar will begin to rotate, indicating that a video is detected and is available to download.
8. Click the down arrow next to the molecule icon. You’ll likely see a list of choices.
9. Select one of the choices presented with a YouTube logo. Videos with [HQ] next to them indicate the higher quality versions.
10. Save the file (it will be an .flv or .mp4 extension) to your hard drive and remember where you saved the file.
11. Start the WinFF program and click the Add button to open the Flash or Mpeg4 video file you saved in the previous step.
12. In the Convert To… box select WMV. In the adjacent box select WMV2.
13. Select an appropriate output folder for the converted file to be saved to.
14. Click the Convert button. You should see a “Converting” output window (with a black screen) displaying the conversion process. Press a key when the process had finished. The window will close.
15. Now open PowerPoint and insert a video in the appropriate slide. Choose either to play the video automatically or play when clicked on. That’s it.