Gearing Up With Google Sites

This session was presented by Matt Faquay an ITRT from Chesterfield County Public Schools.  

Matt’s workshop was aimed at teachers who have Google accounts and might be considering using Google Sites as a vehicle to create webpages for their classes.  Here is the site he used for the presentation.  Perhaps after reading this post, you, like Amanda Mitchell, the librarian at NHS, will consider creating web pages using Google Sites.

Ponder, if you will, the four basic templates Google Sites provides:

• Start Page - intended to be the home page
• File Cabinet - can be used as an index to downloadable documents, presentations and other files you may want your students to access
• Announcements - could be used as a place to post homework assignments
• Lists - useful for group assignments. By default this template has columns for tasks to be done, open issues, and current status - but these can be added to or modified.

When editing a Google Site teachers can take documents, presentations, etc., created in Google Drive and embed or insert them right into a the web page. Images are easy to add by uploading a picture, or by linking to an image on another page.  Additionally, Google offers plenty of "gadgets" (widgets) which can be added - weather, calendars, clocks, news, games and more.  With a little customization a Google presentation can become an rolling slide show on your webpage.  

Here is a suggestion to consider; a start page can be set up that only the teacher can edit.  There can be a navigation bar on the start page from which viewers can go to individual pages edited by students.  As with shared documents in Google Drive, pages can be set up with different levels of access.  Deleting a page, for example,  would be something only the page owner could do, a collaborator could change it, and a viewer can only look at it.  Pages do not necessarily need to be viewable by the general public..  

Templates and Themes are available to help in making the pages look professional.  A couple of interesting scripts were mentioned in the workshop.  One, PageMeister, creates pages for every student in your room  A second, Google Analytics, keeps track of everyone who visits your site, where they visited from, how long they spent on your page, and your bounce rate (did they leave your site or click around within it).

Here is a site, at Google Sites, on how to use Google Sites.  From one of the subpages on the link I just gave you, here are examples of how others have used Google Sites:

Teacher examples:

• The Tech Download by Selena Ward
• Mrs. Mary Fran Lynch, Alta Vista, Room 12
• Ms. Schroeder's Classroom
• World History @ West Hills
• 2009 Washington DC Trip
• Boby Systems Survivor
• Christine's Circuit Board

Student examples:

• Report on a state
• Senior service project
• Soundtrack of Jean Valjean's Life
• ePortfolios using Google Apps
• Student electronic portfolio

School examples:

• Google-ize your staff development
• Tech Tip Tuesday
• Van Meter Library VOICE Site

Design examples:

• Pimp My Site: Customizing Google Sites, by Jonathan Wylie
• Google Sites: More Than You Think, by Chad Griffiths

After a bit of digging, I just discovered how to add the icon for “Sites” to my icon drop down list.  This is the first time I remember knowing that you could customize this window.  You can just drag around the icons that are there and put them where you want them--or you can add other icons from the “even more” section, if you wish.