Thursday, October 1, 2015

Publish Google Docs as a Webpage

Sending a letter home to parents has come a long way since the mimeographed letters that turned many a teacher's finger dark blue.  The increased use of Google Docs in our classrooms means that some teachers are finding good reasons to send Google-created docs home to parents. 

The issue starts to become, "I don't want parents to login to anything to see my Google Doc." One way around this question is to publish the Google Doc as an HTML website.   The document retains all of the content but is displayed on a web page by itself for any web browser to view. 




Any Google Doc can be published to the web.   Open the document and select "File/Publish to the web... ".



By default, the document will be visible to anyone on the internet.  Click Publish and then OK to complete the process. 






Once published, you will be given the URL that you can share as is (or shorten with goo.gl, bit.ly or some other shortener).








You can stop publishing the doc at any time using the "Published content & settings" drop menu and clicking "Stop publishing".




There are a number of other ways to publish information or send it to parents, but the Publish to the web option can quickly share your Google Docs with anybody without requiring a login or Google account.