Add a Google Doc to a course

Conversation from an earlier attempt to upload this video. I removed the other entry to avoid duplicates but wanted to keep the comments.

By Derek Chirnside of on Wed, 10/08/2011 - 09:25

Mark: What happens if you add a URL rather than a file?

ie a URL to the Google doc.

-Derek

• delete
• edit
• reply
• Flag as offensive
• Mark this comment as reviewed 
• Needs review 

By Mark Osborne of Albany Senior High School on Wed, 10/08/2011 - 10:02

Hi Derek,

Adding a link to a Google Doc allows users to edit the original document, but Google's permissions can be cumbersome. The Google doc would need to be shared (for editing) so that all members of your Moodle course could access and edit it. The best way to do this (if you don't have teaching classes as groups in GApps) would be to allow all users within your GApps domain to edit the document and this may not work for all teachers in all situations.

The real benefit of adding a file in the manner described in the video is that one no longer needs to download a Google doc locally before adding it to a course, and therefore opens up GApps as a potential repository of content.

Mark

• delete
• edit
• reply
• Flag as offensive
• Mark this comment as reviewed 
• Needs review 

By Derek Chirnside of on Wed, 10/08/2011 - 10:56

Hmm.  Also, AFAIK you can set a document to be read only from a student perspective - they can just view it, not edit it.

Then there are two options at least:

• 1) Share with only some people with viewing permissions.  (ie they need to be logged into google, and have their login permissioned on the page)
• 2) Have the URL unlisted, so that only people who have the link can find it easily.  (Like an unlisted phone number)  This could be used for non-sentivie docs (like for instance a course oultine.

Refs: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=86152

http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=180199&topi...

Why I am interested in this.

The option to upload a file into Moodle several times in different courses has NO facility to change at source and reflect this change everywhere.  The file is uploaded and stored once, and links to this from the database.  Changing this file in the database COULD be done, there is a proof of concept on Moodle.org, it is possible to code, but MoodleHQ is reluctant to do so at the moment due to secturity/complexity issues.

Using Google docs in either of the two modes above (un findable mode or restricto to view mode) has the huge advantage you can link to it from anywhere in Moodle and change it ONCE to reflect everywhere on Moodle.

My questions, out of curiosity.

• Can we set up permissions to the whole folder on Google?  ie then you have one place to put all your changeable files, link to them easily
• Can you set up a group with these permissions?
• If yes, how easy is this (and you allude to this - not easy)  I could not find in the help any concept of a group for permissions in google docs.  But it may be there.
• Does the URL chooser work as expected?  I had diffiulty with 2.0.1 but have not looked at it since then.

If all this works easily, you can have Moodle managing the learning pathway, what links to be working with, and Google docs taking care of a whole lot of other things both the edit and non-edit options.

Your point is right.  Work in one place (google docs) and point straight to Moodle and it is uploaded.  No two steps.  Cool.  [I'm preferring Dropbox, so I can work offline.  Need several repositories to be functioning I'd say to meet all needs I'd say]

-Derek