The All New Google Sites for Schools - Video Tutorial

Back in June, Google announced that Sites, its web design program, would be getting a long overdue update (see my post from then). Rather than just add some new features, Google chose to rewrite the entire program from the ground up.

As of November, the all new version of Google Sites is now available for everyone to use. So how does it stack up?

In short... Easy, Beautiful, but Basic

• Easy - By far the new version of Google Sites is the easiest web design program I have ever used (and I even wrote my own web design program about 15 years ago... anyone remember POW-PAK?) Every time I have demonstrated the new sites to a group of teachers, everyone is blown away by how simple and intuitive it is to quickly create a functional website.
• Beautiful - Although “easy” is important, it would be no good if the resulting site was unattractive. Thankfully the new Google Sites makes it difficult to make an ugly site. The options for themes and layouts keep everything clean, organized, modern, and attractive. The sites even adjust perfectly from desktop to tablet to phone view. Even if design is not your strength, you can make a beautiful site.
• Basic - So what’s the drawback? At the moment, the biggest weakness with the new Sites is its lack of features. The program is still very new, so its tools and options are limited. If you are used to the Classic Sites, you will quickly notice some things missing such as commenting, a blog page, page-level permissions, revision history, and such. However, I am sure all of these features (and more) will be rolling out over the coming months as Google continues to develop the program. (For a thorough comparison chart of Classic versus New Sites, see this page from Steegle.) Even at its "Basic" level though, the new program can make an excellent site.

Although the new Google Sites is very easy to use, you may still benefit from a tutorial walkthrough of its features. See below for the recorded video of one-hour webinar I conducted where I go through all the steps of creating a classroom website using the new Sites.

5 Google Tools for Staff Professional Development

In schools we are always looking for creative ways to offer meaningful professional development to staff. This might mean:

• Flexible PD where staff can participate at a time of day or day of the week that works best for them
• Interactive PD where staff can communicate with others, share ideas, ask questions, and more
• Engaging PD with the use of multimedia to go beyond typical text or slideshows

There are certainly dozens of excellent technology tools to use for delivering professional development, and we should try out a wide variety to discover which ones work best for our staff, content, and goals. Many of the free Google tools can lend themselves to providing flexible, interactive, and engaging PD. In this blog post we will take a brief look at five possible Google tools to use:

• Google Hangout
• Google Hangouts on Air
• Google Classroom
• Google Communities
• Google Sites

See below for details on each of these tools, ideas for use in delivering professional development, and additional resources to help you learn more.

The Totally New Google Sites

Out of all the major Google tools, most people would agree that Google Sites has been the most overdue for an update. Yes, it is one of my favorite programs, and I have used it extensively to design websites, and I have created loads of training videos and guides for it (see here for details). Still though, when compared to most modern web design tools, Google Sites has fallen far behind its competition.

Google Sites actually started out its life as a product called JotSpot which Google purchased in 2006 and then finally released in 2008 as Google Sites. Over time Google has added new features to the underlying JotSpot code (such as the horizontal navigation bar) but the foundation was still a ten year old product with new options built on top. This prevented Sites from being able to act like newer web design tools with drag and drop editing, layouts that respond to mobile devices, and such.

Rather than another update, Sites needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.

And now it appears that is exactly what Google is doing! In a recent post on the Google Apps Updates blog, they have announced a “totally rebuilt” Google Sites is coming. This is fantastic news for schools, organizations, and individuals who need to create websites but were struggling with Sites lack of updates and modern features.

So what can we expect with the new Google Sites? And when can you get access to it? See below for all the details I have been able to collect on this new announcement.

The Ultimate Guide to Google Sites for Schools

Google Sites is a great option for schools to design websites for classrooms, activities, sports, student projects, portfolios, or entire districts. These are many benefits to using Google Sites:

• All web-based - edit from any device with Internet access.
• Easy but powerful - Quickly set up a basic website, or design a very complex site.
• Google integration - insert docs, forms, presentations, spreadsheets, images, videos, maps, and more.
• Multiple sites - create as many sites as you wish.
• Storage - 100GB for your domain. However you can also link in files from Drive and other services to avoid reaching this limit.
• Public or private - make certain pages public or private, and choose who is allowed to see the private pages. Great for content that should only be accessed by staff or specific students.
• Collaboration - Share edit rights with others, so other people can help edit and add to the site. Can be done on a per-page level to share edit rights with just certain people and for just certain pages on your site.

Because Google Sites is such a powerful web design tool, it can take a while to investigate all the options and master each of the features. To help with this I have been doing a series of one-hour webinars on using Google Sites for Schools. I now have three hours of video training available covering basic to advanced Google Sites use.

See below for each of the three recorded webinars, along with a brief outline of what each training covers. You will also find my detailed 26-page help guide on creating a Google Site for your classroom.

How to Play YouTube Videos Safely in School

YouTube can be a powerful resource for education with over 4 billion videos watched every day. Despite the number of cat videos, there are actually quite a lot of educationally valuable videos. Google even has their education channels at https://www.youtube.com/edu where they have currated videos by grade level and subject area.

However, even if you find the perfect video explaining how to add fractions or the phases of meiosis or how the pyramids were built, you can still run into a problem when having your students watch it. By default in addition to seeing the video they will also see ads, user comments below the video, suggested videos on the page, and then more suggested videos after their clip is done. At best these could be distracting. At worst they could be inappropriate for your students.

So what can you do?

Below we will take a look at three options you can use to let your students watch a YouTube video without all the extra stuff. You can view the video explaining the options, or read the directions below, or both!