How to embed documents in your blog (eg blogger)
Several people on the CAE 23 Things project wanted to know how to embed documents in their blog. There are a few ways.
(edublogs allows you to upload documents, but i’m not sure that blogger does. And David made the point that if he’s uploading all the time, he’ll use his storage quota in no time.)
The trick is to use an external service, eg Slideshare, iScribd, youtube, docstocs, yudu or google docs (your choice could depend on the kind of document).
- sign up to another web service (eg scribd, slideshare, youtube)
- upload your document to the other service, then
- embed the document in your blog post, using an “embed code” from that other service.
- Dale Pobega’s Free ESL club (from Duke St Community House in Sunshine) has plenty of examples of embedded content, including the Banana ESL grammar book at the left (via scribd).
- Richard Byrne uses Yudu and Docstocs in this post from his Free technology for teachers blog.
Some other suggestions out there on the web:
- Digital inspiration links to some services,
- Blogger help files suggest Scribd
- eHow has more detail on how to do this at Scribd
- (so does Krishna De)
- Slideshare is a great service for sharing powerpoint presentations. They have their own help file for posting directly to blogger.
(digital inspiration goes further too, with a post called “embed almost anything into your blog”)
..okay. i wonder if that helps. We haven’t looked at these “embed codes” yet.. perhaps we need a help video.
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Photo credit: thanks minifig from flickr (creative commons license).
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I haven’t tried Scribd, though I know it’s very popular. (Of course, so is Limewire – with fearful consequences.)
I like Google docs except they (used to? still?) limit upload size. It’s okay for text-only, but if you try uploading, say, a report with photos, you’re sunk. The good part is that your doc or spreadsheet will open like a webpage – no downloading required – and you can collaborate.
My tool of choice is MSN’s Skydrive, which is attached to Hotmail / Window’s Live. It has lots of capacity, offers download or “open with” and allows private, selective or public viewing. The only hitch I’ve had is that filenames with spaces (e.g. Wendells Notes, instead of Wendells_Notes) won’t download / open properly within Firefox.
Regards,
I was wrong about Skydrive’s flexibility – in fact, they offer only temporary direct linking. After a short time (about 24 hours?) the link goes dead. The only recourse is to send readers to a publicly accessible folder, where they can chose to either open or download a file. (Can they modify and then upload again? I don’t know – Skydrive has been making quiet changes in the past few months, alas.)
W.
(mic: Thanks for the info and the clarification, Wendell. Ah those quiet changes.. many of these “cloud companies” seem to get in the crowds of people then make their changes in the background.)