Using Google Sites

Google Sites is a completely online-based tool that allows you to create a simple or extensive web site. With a few clicks, you can create multiple pages, embed rich content, and even allow others to add and collaborate on content.  Sites brings together all of the other great Google tools – letting you easily embed Google Docs, Calendar, Picasa albums, and much more! NOTE: Unlike other Google apps, only one person can work on a site's page at a time. 

Ways to use Google Sites

• For your district, consider a staff dashboard with links to individual classroom Google sites, rather than a list of emails.
• Teachers can Use a Google Site to Prepare for a School Trip 
•   LMS's can create a library website to share its library resources, new technology, reading lists, and links to student projects.
• Use sites for students to:
• share their service learning projects
• house their portfolios (consider buying domain names for students so they can continue to use their sites beyond high school)
• showcase their research (sample: https://sites.google.com/a/apps.edina.k12.mn.us/new-york/home)
• share their service learning projects 
• hand in assignments electronically  
• create club web pages
• document their School Trip  
• view videos of classroom lectures that you've inserted and then, using a form under the video, ask students to respond to what they're watching ("Stop the video and reflect on what you just saw")  Flipping your classroom  

Google Sites Creation Modules (step by step for getting started, created by Google. Very basic)

Tips shared by Molly Schroeder for creating a Google site:

• Consider starting with the Classroom Site template in the sites gallery 
• When you create a site: if you check the "Everybody in the world can view this site" in Google apps for ed, it means that anyone within your school's domain can edit the site. Instead, check the "only people I specify can view/edit this site" option.  
• Check out the Google Gadgets Gallery for additions to your site
• iFrame (Allows you to include any part of a web page into your Google site)
• Merriam Webster's Word of the Day 
• Calendar, Date & Time, Directions, YouTube Channel and more!
• Remember that when you insert videos, they can only come from a Google doc, Google video or YouTube. Consider uploading videos to Google docs as you find them, then you can easily insert them into a site.
• When you use the announcements page, it automatically puts your first and last name on the post, so not a good idea to use it for student blogging.
• Make sure when you are creating a page, choose where you want the page to be ("put page at top level" or "???) or it will automatically become a sub page of another page.  

More Site Template Tips

Here's Wisconsin's Google Sites Overview (includes links to tutorials, help files and more)

Colette Cassinelli explains some of the types of pages you can create and shares some exemplary sites in her TechTipTuesday blog

Creating Interactive Portfolios Using Google Sites -great guide to setting this type of site up, developed by Helen C. Barrett, Ph.D.

Molly Schroeder, Edina MN Schools Tech Integration Specialist, has compiled an excellent list of sample sites and help resources.