Back in September when I went to Chicago for the Google Teachers Academy I found out about a project that another Google Certified Teacher was doing entitled “Greetings From…” Postcard Geography. It’s a great project that I wanted to get involved in so I contacted a Social Studies teacher from one of my schools and asked her if there was any way we could incorporate the project into her curriculum. She was working with a group of her students on a project that detailed the history of some of the neighborhoods in St. Louis. Her students have created PowerPoint presentations and it was my hope to use these as a part of the project. I spent a great deal of the day today trying to figure out a way to embed their presentations into the placemarks as a part of the Google Map.
Unfortunately, and much to my chagrin, I was not successful. My first thought was to put the PowerPoints into Google Presentations and, hopefully, embed them. I knew that it would be problematic because the embed code from Google Presentations uses the <iframe> tag which Google Maps doesn’t support. So I tried services like Slideshare and Zoho which uses <object> and <div> tags. I even went about trying to hand code it using <embed> codes. It works in a blog and on a regular site but it didn’t work in Google Maps. So, it looks like rather than embedding the presentations, I will be linking out to them. It’s not my first choice, but after lots of research and lots of frustration, I think that I’m going to give up on it and focus my energies elsewhere. So be it. Maybe someday Google will get all of their services to talk to each other.
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