How to give students an HTML activity in Google Classroom (as a link, not an attachment)

It's Sunday evening. You asked ChatGPT or Claude for a review game for tomorrow's class, or finished a branching story in Twine, and it works in your browser. You attached the .html file to the assignment, checked it from the student side, and got a screen of code. Or a download button. Thirty students on school Chromebooks will get the same thing in the morning.

The short answer: don't attach the file. Put it on a link that opens as a web page, and add that link to the assignment. Students click it and the activity runs, with no account and no download.

Why won't my HTML file open for students in Google Classroom?

Files you attach to a Classroom post are kept in Google Drive. Drive's job is storing files, and it stores an HTML file as a file: it doesn't hand it to the browser as a web page, so what students see is the text of the page, or an offer to download it. Nothing is wrong with what you made. Why Google Drive shows your HTML as code explains the mechanism in more detail.

So the fix isn't a different export or a different file name. It's putting the file somewhere that serves it as a page.

What about having students download it, or zipping it, or SCORM?

These are the usual suggestions in teacher forums, and each one works somewhere. Here's where each stops:

How do I post an HTML activity in Google Classroom as a link?

1. Check what your tool exported. If it's one .html file, you're ready. If it's a folder, an index.html with images, scripts or other files next to it, zip the whole folder. If it's an H5P activity, export it from Lumi as HTML first; that page covers the content types that don't export.
2. Upload it to miinideck. Sign in with a free account and drop in the HTML file or the ZIP. For a ZIP, the entry page is found automatically. You can also upload a PDF, PNG or JPEG. Files can be up to 10 MB on a free account.
3. Decide on a password. It's free on every plan. For a class review game you may not need one: the address is a long random string, isn't listed anywhere and is kept out of search engines by default. Add one if the page has answers you'd rather not see travel beyond the class, and know that students can pass the password on as easily as the link.
4. Open the link yourself first, in a private browser window, the way a student will.
5. In Classroom, add it to the assignment as a Link and paste the address. One link for the whole class. Students open it from the assignment like any other link.

If the activity is only for this week, you can skip the account: the upload page without sign-up takes a file up to 3 MB and gives you a link that lasts 7 days. You can't fix a mistake behind that link, though, so a typo in question 4 means a new link and a new post.

Will the link still work for the rest of the term?

That depends on the plan, and on whether the activity needs to:

• An activity due on Friday only needs a week. On a free account, every link lasts 7 days by default, which covers it.
• One activity students come back to all term, like a unit review game, goes in your free account's one permanent link. It never expires.
• A term's worth of activities that all stay open for revision needs more than one permanent link. That's Solo ($4.99/month): links don't expire unless you set a date, files up to 25 MB, 100 MB of storage. On a free account, every link counts toward 10 MB of storage in total.

Spotted a wrong answer after you posted it? Fix the file, open the page in your miinideck dashboard and choose Replace file. The link in Classroom keeps working and you don't need to edit the assignment. Students who open or reload it get the corrected version.

Can students' scores go into the Classroom gradebook?

No. A page on a link runs in each student's browser and doesn't send anything back, not to you and not to Classroom. If the activity keeps a score or remembers progress, that's saved in the browser on the device the student used. A different Chromebook starts from scratch, and students who share one device under the same login share that saved progress too.

So decide what you need from it:

• Scores recorded in the gradebook: use Google Forms or the quiz tool in your LMS, which are built to collect answers.
• Proof that students finished: ask the AI to end the activity on a results screen that shows the score and the date, and have students hand in a screenshot with the assignment. It's on trust, which is often enough for practice work.
• Practice only: nothing needed. The activity is the point.

What should I check before the lesson?

Two minutes the day before saves the first ten of the lesson:

• Open the link on a student Chromebook, on the school network. School web filters vary, and we can't tell you in advance whether yours lets a given address through. If it doesn't, your IT contact can usually allow it.
• Check the page doesn't depend on things your school's network may block. AI-built pages often pull fonts or code libraries from other websites. If those are blocked, the page loads broken. Asking the AI for one self-contained file, with everything written into the HTML, avoids that.
• Open it on a phone if students will do it as homework.
• Click through to the end once, including the last screen. That's where a broken button tends to hide.