Day 84. Google Docs embedding

Following up on yesterday, when I cleaned up all my Diigo links to be Google Doc links... I tried a test embedding of Google Docs over at Google Sites, and it worked great; the key, which I did not understand a few summers ago (when I tried a similar experiment), is to embed the webpage version of the Google Doc, not the editable version.

So, this opens up huge new possibilities. Instead of messing with my UnTextbook blog, I think I might start migrating content over to Google Sites like this, so that each unit is a freestanding Google Site, but where I have a lot more control over the navigation, but with the texts at Google Docs... REUSABLE.

That is the biggest problem with the blog-as-untextbook: I cannot reuse materials. But by having the stories as Google Docs that can then be embedded in multiple collections, I can do not just the book-based unit, but also anthology units.

Which means creating these Google Docs is going to be a HUGE project after all; I want to start migrating all my Africa UnTextbook content to this new system to try it out... and then start building new thematic units.

Hopefully I can get the students excited about this too! I will work on Africa all semester long like this, and then in the Spring semester, I can tackle the India content... based on having gotten thousands of India bookmarks going in Diigo.

I even checked, and a Google Doc embeddded in a Site page looks good on the phone. This is going to be so cool!!!