Sharing a Google document as a web page

OK, trying to get back on track a little as my last couple of posts haven't really been that education orientated so I thought I would share this little trick with you. As an introduction, the last Ofsted report for my school concluded (amounts other things) that our students weren't very good at communicating (no real surprise there then) and didn't talk to one another about their learning. Now, I may not be the greatest teacher in the world but I do know that children learn best when they discuss their learning, ideally with one another (the technical term is metacognition, the student become aware of their own learning) so it makes sense that if we really want to see improvement in learning, we need to get the students talking about what they are doing. Now, we have a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE-Fronter) and this has the ability to set up forums but it is a little clunky to use and it also shows user names (which you may want) but I wanted an anonymous forum so I thought I would investigate using Google Docs so below is a step by step guide to setting up a shared document:

Step 1-create a Google Document.

Create a document in Google Docs or Apps as normal.


Step 2-share your document with everyone.

Click on share (right hand side) to bring up share settings.


Click change in the dialogue box and select public on the web. Make sure you tick allow anyone to edit (no sign in required) box.


Step 3-get the URL for the web page you have created.

Click save and another dialogue box will open with a URL to your shared document web page.


Copy and save this URL as you will need to give it to your students.

Step 4-Make the URL smaller!

There is no way students will be able to type in correctly a standard Google URL so use bitly or tinyurl to shorten your address.

Step 5-give out the URL.

We use Exchange as our E-Mail server so we can easily E-Mail a link to students, otherwise, write the bitly or tinyurl on the board and off you go,

Check out my finished example:

http://bit.ly/g7Ti9c

Please feel free to leave a comment on the document (please, keep it clean and respectful, there may be children watching!).


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