Creating Web Ready Content
From FCTL eLearning Wiki
Ferris State University has a campus license that allows our students, faculty and staff to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 for their home computers at a very reasonable rate. With this, as well as having most of the computers on campus with MS Office 2007 installed on them, we tend to think of MS Office as being ubiquitous, but the reality is, it is not. There are other word processing software packages available out there as well as open source software, so your students may not use MS Office.
Additionally, MS Office documents are not really meant for viewing on the web. Microsoft has created viewers and such so sometimes they work and open in a browser, but its not consistent. Depending on the computer you are using, the internet browser you are using and the settings of your computer and browser, MS Office documents may or may not open and function they way you intended when you added it to your FerrisConnect course.
However, there are a variety of different options available to make content ready for the web.
- Google Docs
- Adobe PDF Files
- Flash Paper
- Scribd
- Converting MS Office Documents to HTML
How do you choose the right solution for you?
- Do you need to keep a specific formatting in your document?
- Then using Flash Paper or a PDF would probably be the best options for you.
- Do you want your students to view your document?
- Do you want your students to download your document?
- Do you want your students to modify your document?
- Then use the Assignment tool in FerrisConnect, or the Mail tool to provide the document to your students because these tools deliberately give students a download button.
