New Google Sites...first impressions

Google Sites has been a neglected element of the Google suite of tools, long overdue for makeover. Other free website design platforms such as Weebly & Wix have been preferred if you wanted your site to look remotely attractive!

With the latest release of the new Google Sites (BETA), I took 30 minutes to remake my school's student homepage. Have a look for yourself and compare the interface...

ORIGINAL VERSION

Created using "OLD" Google Sites

NEW VERSION

Created using "NEW" Google Sites

Apart from the aesthetics...a few other observations from my brief dabble.

TICKS

• sites are now easily accessible from my Drive rather than having to go to sites.google.com
• can double click anywhere for quick insert (see image below)

• header banner is more customisable...can add text boxes, images etc.
• preview mode allows you to see tablet and phone views
• much easier interface for editing, will be very student friendly even down to junior years

CROSSES

• templates are very limited (yes...it is still in BETA)
• where are all the font styles??

• elements can be dropped and dragged, but this is still a bit clunky if you want to get something in a particular spot
• no ability to add external links to horizontal menu- it is just auto-populated with any pages from your site. In my example above, the workaround was to insert a series of little text boxes directly below the header and hyperlink each one
• appears to be no "page-level permissions" feature as yet- something that can be very handy if you want to allow students to manage certain elements of a site, but not everything!

Above all else, it is a breath of fresh air in a tired old product...looking forward to new features rolling out in the near future!

Presenting with Glogster (Module 5)

An exciting, engaging and super easy to use tool for presenting projects is Glogster!

*make sure you visit the EDU Glogster, not the glogster.com

Glogster is an online, interactive way to create project posters. Posters come to life by combining text, pictures, audio and video. Completed Glogs can be embedded into Google Sites (watch the how to video here). Another plus is that you can login with your Google account, therefore no separate password required (you will need to choose a unique username).

Teaching Ideas:

*Perfect for presenting projects (SOSE, Science, History etc) because it allows text, images, video and audio.

*As there is design elements in Glogster you can also assess visual art and technology if you set up the rubric and assignment focus on presentation as well as content)

*Present autobiographies.

Here is a quick one I whipped up myself & embedded into blogger: