Embedding ArcGIS Online Maps and Storymaps into Microsoft Sway Presentations
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04-07-2016 11:40 PM
by
JosephKerski
Thanks to collaborative work between Esri and Microsoft, ArcGIS Online maps and web mapping applications can now be embedded into Microsoft Sway presentations. Microsoft Sway is a tool by which you can easily create compelling and multimedia-rich presentations that are stored online and thus can be easily shared and viewed on any device. It can also be used to create newsletters, reports, and personal stories. The ability to embed ArcGIS Online maps and web mapping applications, such as storymaps, into Sway presentations enables a seamless, flowing presentation that takes advantages of the interactivity of ArcGIS Online and the capabilities that Sway offers.
For example, I recently gave a presentation at the AAG annual meeting entitled Communicating Geography to the General Public. When you open this presentation, you will see that it includes photographs, video, and text. But scroll down in the presentation for something even better: You will see several live web maps: An Open Street Map in ArcGIS Online that begins with Europe, a storymap I created for the University of Denver campus, a crowdsourced map of 2,000 points collected in the field by educators using the Collector for ArcGIS app, and a proposed trail in Osceola, Iowa. I was able to include these live web maps and apps using the embed code capabilities of Sway.
Other benefits of include: I can easily copy a Sway to another file and edit that for a different presentation or workshop, and thus do not need to completely start over. Furthermore, at the conference I could use any computer that happened to be at the podium to present my content. I could easily direct the audience to view and even interact with the presentation and its live web maps as I was giving the presentation, or during the following week as they returned to their workplace.
The capability of embedding live content from ArcGIS Online represents another example in the flexibility of the ArcGIS platform to be incorporated into a growing number of tools to meet a growing number of needs--in this case, as a powerful communication tool.
For example, I recently gave a presentation at the AAG annual meeting entitled Communicating Geography to the General Public. When you open this presentation, you will see that it includes photographs, video, and text. But scroll down in the presentation for something even better: You will see several live web maps: An Open Street Map in ArcGIS Online that begins with Europe, a storymap I created for the University of Denver campus, a crowdsourced map of 2,000 points collected in the field by educators using the Collector for ArcGIS app, and a proposed trail in Osceola, Iowa. I was able to include these live web maps and apps using the embed code capabilities of Sway.
Other benefits of include: I can easily copy a Sway to another file and edit that for a different presentation or workshop, and thus do not need to completely start over. Furthermore, at the conference I could use any computer that happened to be at the podium to present my content. I could easily direct the audience to view and even interact with the presentation and its live web maps as I was giving the presentation, or during the following week as they returned to their workplace.
The capability of embedding live content from ArcGIS Online represents another example in the flexibility of the ArcGIS platform to be incorporated into a growing number of tools to meet a growing number of needs--in this case, as a powerful communication tool.
Embedding ArcGIS Online maps and storymaps into Microsoft Sway.