V-Drive & Calendar

Integrating Google Drive & Calendar

So how do you give your teacher Web site some legs? By adding Google Calendar to it, of course! How about some arms? Google Drive will let your site grab handouts and other information you use for teaching and pull them into your site. Blogger and Drive and Calendar work seamlessly together.

While there are many ways to incorporate your Google Drive Documents into your site, my advice is to at least start with a "digital milk crate" of your handouts so that students can easily access these files. If you incorporate a Google Calendar into your site, you can even use it as your main lesson planner!

1. In Google Drive, make a new folder by clicking the "NEW" button and picking "Folder." Name the folder something you want students to be able to understand (I like using "Kindt's Crate!).

2. Right-click (or control-click) on the new folder, and pick "Share."

3. In the "Share with others" box that pops up, click "Get shareable link" to copy a link to this newly shared folder (notice it will give them privileges to view only), then click the "Done" button. Any documents you move or copy to this folder will be shared with your students automatically.

4. On your Blogger Dashboard, click "Pages," and then click the Page on which you would like a link to your handouts (the starter site I had you import has a page called "Homework," which is a good place for this).

5. Type some friendly text on the Page to explain what students will find here. You will put a link over this text to take them to your handouts.

6. Highlight your friendly text and then click the "Link" button on the toolbar.

7. In the Web address bar, paste the link you copied earlier and then click "OK."

8. Click "Update" to save your changes and then either click the tab in your browser that has your browsing view of your site or click the "View blog" button to see the changes. When students click the link, they will see thumbnails of all the documents you put into this folder and can view them, download them, or print them as needed.

9. If you have a Google Calendar already that you would like to share with your students, you can skip the next two steps and go straight to #12. If you don't have one already, go to your Google Calendar.

10. In Google Calendar, click the down arrow to the right of "My calendars" and then select "Create new calendar."

11. Type a Calendar Name, then click the box next to "Share this calendar with others" this will automatically share this calendar with everyone in Ladue Schools. Click the "Create Calendar" button.

12. In Google Calendar, click the down arrow to the right of your calendar you want to share and pick "Calendar settings."

13. In the "Embed This Calendar" section, highlight the HTML code you see in the box (it starts with the words "<iframe src..." and copy it. You can also do as it says and "Customize the color, size, and other options" before copying this code, but the default settings will work well with the template I gave you to start with.

14. On the Blogger Dashboard, click Pages and then click the Page called "Calendar."

15. Click the HTML button at the top left to see the current code for this page. You will see a calendar already embedded here. Highlight the current code, delete it, and paste in the embed code you copied earlier. Be sure to leave the friendly text at the top above the code. You can change this friendly text later, but don't delete it now.

16. Click the Compose button at the top left, and alter the friendly text to suit your liking. Don't worry that you don't see your calendar yet--you will when you look at your site as a browser. When you are done, click the "Update" button.

17. Switch to the tab that shows your site as a browser or click the "View blog" button to see the changes. When you click the "Calendar" tab on your site, you will see your embedded calendar. Students can come here to view any changes you make live, or they can even click the "+Google Calendar" button at the bottom right of your calendar to add it permanently to their calendars!

Throughout your teacher Web site, you can make individual links to individual handouts or documents if you like. Just follow the same procedures you did for the handout folder for any particular handouts for which you might want a special link (like a review sheet for a test coming up in a Post on the front page of your site, perhaps).

As you have been creating your teacher Web site, you might have noticed that there are places where students and parents can make comments. This might be making your nervous, yes? Well then, it's time to talk about the Blogger nervous system....