assignment 5 ::Google Sites::

This past year, Google sites was one of the things that I required my creative design class to learn how to use. They enjoyed it for the most part until we were introduced to the online Flash Site maker called Wix. I didn't really get to explore the development tools on Google Sites as much as I would have liked to. So, I was glad when I saw this assignment on our list of things to do. Google sites is much more than a personal web-page maker. There is no reasonable limit to the amount of things a person could put on their site **If you get to the limit, you seriously need to shrink your photos cause your site is taking too long to load :) ** The possibilities for the quality of site and use for a Google site is nearly limitless. It is also nice in the fact that it is so user friendly. This weekend I made another site for a friend's restaurant. They had a site already but always had a very difficult time getting something changed. With a Google site that is no longer the case. I designed the site and put in all the main content and now they just have to do the updates. The uses for educational purposes are just as expansive. Teachers can make wikis, forums, class web pages STUDENT web pages, and on and on. This tool when paired with Google Docs can be a very powerful interactive tool.

I have been working at LEC for about 2 months now and I have had the opportunity to make a Google site for every class that I've taught. I've found that they are great for quickly collecting resources and giving the URL to your students. They are also a great way to quickly get responses to a form. Instead of having the really long form URL for a Google Doc Form, you can send a URL to a Google Site and the URL can travel by word of mouth as well as electronic means. This has proven to be very beneficial in my classes and I can only imagine that it will be even more in the future.

I am glad to have had this experience. I will be teaching a professional development at my former school. It will be about Google Docs so that is what I decided to have my site about. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to play on it.

http://sites.google.com/site/googdocsismyfriend/

don't panic

mt