Publish Your Docs to the Web

For more than two years now, I have been an avid user of Google Drive in and out of the classroom.  Both my colleague and I have written several posts on the blog describing the various ways that we use Google Drive, from doing group presentations to giving students feedback, both done in real time.  We have enjoyed using it so much that, lucky for us, our school agreed to get us more storage space in Google Drive to put all of our resources there for instant access wherever we are. We now have over 100 GB of space to use as we please.

The amazing part, for me at least, is that the more I use Google Drive, the more I discover new tools and tricks it has to offer.  My most recent discovery was how to publish a Google Doc to the web.  This came about as my colleague and I were asked by our principal about how we could put our UbD (Understanding by Design) curriculum unit plans onto Drive to make it more accessible for her to keep track of what is being taught at school.  After coming up with a basic UbD template on Drive (which you are more the welcome to use by clicking on the image below), we spent the next several days copying and pasting our exisiting UbD unit plans on Microsoft Word to Drive.  

After that, I wanted to make them as easy to access as possible, and that's when I stumbled upon the 'Publish to the web' feature.  For avid users of Drive, like myself, you will certainly be aware of the normal 'Share' settings available at the top right-hand side of the screen after you create a Google Doc. You are presented with three options to share your document: publish on the web; anyone with the link; or only with specific people, as pictured below.

If there's already an option to make your Doc public on the web, then what's the advantage of publishing it to the web? I considered this myself before I actually tried out the publishing option.  However, what I discovered is a huge difference in speed when accessing the document.  When you share a document on the web, as opposed to publishing it, you have to wait a few seconds for the Google Drive to open up, and then the document appears.  On the other hand, when you publish a Doc, Google Drive actually turns your document into a web page, meaning you get instant access to it.

In order to show you this, I have created a test example for you to try out.  I created two Google Docs, one of which has been shared on the web, and the other has been published to the web.  Click the two links below...

Google Doc Shared Publicly on the Web

Google Doc Published on the Web

What do you think?  For my colleague and I, it was a no-brainer.  For documents that we want to share publicly from now on, we will certainly publish them to the web.  That is what we did, getting back to my earlier story, with our UbD plans.  We published them all to the web, and then linked them all together into one Google Doc (pictured below) for the principal to access whenever she wants.

In short, if you want to publish a Doc on the web, you can do it only two mouse clicks.  After you create a Doc, click 'File' at the top left-hand side of the screen, and then 'Publish to the web'.  Google Drive will then ask if you if you are sure you want to publish your document.  Click the 'OK' button, and you are done. Copy the URL address, and share it or link it wherever you want.  It is a wonderful tool that Google has come up with, and with all the research and development that Google is putting into Drive, there is without doubt doing to be many more features to be discovered in the near future.