Many faculty<\/strong><\/span> include images with content (announcements, discussion board instructions or posts, content items, etc.) that they create in\u00a0Blackboard<\/em>. The\u00a0Blackboard\u00a0<\/em>tip for this week focuses on some best practices to follow when embedding images in a\u00a0Blackboard\u00a0<\/em>textbox.<\/p>\n First,<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in order for an image to display properly in\u00a0Blackboard<\/em>, you\u00a0need\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>to embed it (How do I do that?<\/a><\/strong><\/em>), rather than simply copy and paste it. This is because, when you embed an image into a\u00a0Blackboard\u00a0<\/em>textbox, that image is uploaded to the Content Collection<\/strong> area of your course, where it becomes part of your course and can be viewed by all course users. An image that is copied and pasted is not uploaded to your Content Collection<\/strong> area, and although you, as instructor, will be able to see it, your students will not<\/strong><\/em> be able to see the image when they view the item that you copied and pasted it into.<\/p>\n Second,<\/strong><\/span> if you embed an image in\u00a0Blackboard<\/em>,\u00a0and that image was downloaded from a website (either directly or indirectly by doing a\u00a0Google\u00a0<\/em>image search), the image may be in a file-format, such as\u00a0.png<\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0.bmp<\/strong>, that produces a very large file size.\u00a0 Accumulating a number of image files like this in your\u00a0Blackboard\u00a0<\/em>course can make your course unmanageably large. In addition, in most cases, that image also functions as a web-link, and thus may serve as a conduit for a malicious process, which you would expose your students to if you were to directly embed that image into your course.<\/p>\n The process<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0of putting an image file into a \u201csize-friendly\u201d format, while stripping it of any link function that it might perform, is a simple one.<\/p>\n PC users<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0can simply open the file in\u00a0MS Paint<\/em>\u00a0(which is included with all recent versions of\u00a0Windows<\/em>), and select the option of saving it as a\u00a0JPEG<\/strong>\u00a0file, which produces a good quality image with a small file size, and no link functionality. See the following screenshots:<\/p>\n As the following screenshots show,<\/strong><\/span> Mac users can get the same results by importing the image file into\u00a0iPhoto\u00a0<\/em>(a program that is bundled with\u00a0OS X), and then exporting it as a\u00a0JPEG\u00a0<\/strong>file (Note:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cimporting\u201d and \u201cexporting\u201d in\u00a0iPhoto\u00a0<\/em>is the same as \u201copening\u201d and \u201csaving\u201d in\u00a0MS Paint<\/em>):<\/p>\n For related information,<\/strong><\/span> use the following link to view a tutorial on creating, editing and deleting images in\u00a0Blackboard<\/em>: Create\/Edit\/Delete Images<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Use the following link<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0to download a printable version of this\u00a0Bb\u00a0<\/em>tip of the week: Download the Tip<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n![\"01\"](\"http:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/016.jpg\")
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