myUSF Blackboard News

If you are a friend of Google Calendars, and an owner of a Blackboard course or Organization, this will be useful.

Within Google Calendar is a great feature for embedding calendars on other web pages. As you update your Google Calendar, the web page with the embedded calendar is automatically updated. And what is Blackboard if nothing more than a fancy web page. If you are running a course, it’s easy to put all the important dates in Google Calendar for that course and embed it in your class, so that students can then add the calendar to their own Google Calendars. For Organizations, the same benefit is available for Managers and Members.

Here’s how to embed your calendar on your website:

1. In the calendar list on the left, click the down-arrow next to the calendar you want to embed, and select Calendar settings. (Alternatively, click the Settings link at the bottom of the calendar list, then click the name of the calendar.)

2. Copy the iframe code displayed in the ‘Embed This Calendar’ section.

3. Paste this code into your website to embed your calendar. In Blackboard, this is easily done by Adding an item. Be sure to click the button for HTML source mode, or you’ll be adding the HTML code to your item and not the embedded calendar.

If you’d like to customize your embedded calendar, click the Customize the color, size, and other options link above the iframe field to access the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper. Carefully select your options in the Calendar Helper and paste the customized iframe code in your website.

To display events from multiple calendars in the same embedded calendar, simply follow the instructions above to access the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper. Then, select the checkbox next to each calendar you wish to display, in the section ‘Calendars to Display.’ Keep in mind that because the Weather Calendar pulls data based on your own settings, information from this calendar will not display if embedded on your website.

Please note that you can change the amount of information available on your calendar’s address by clicking the Change sharing settings link in the ‘Calendar Address’ section.