Forever in the Middle: Online Learning with Google Sites

Google Sites for Online Learning

Now that online learning is the plan for all students, I spent some time reflecting on Distance Learning successes and failures from last year so I can create a more meaningful learning experience for students this time around.  With Distance Learning, I used Google Classroom exclusively to connect with students, post and collect work. It worked great for what I needed but he only drawback was that it was difficult to organize in a way that was easy to navigate for even my less computer-savvy students. (They DO exist, believe it or not!) Jenni Merry wrote a great blog post in March showing how to tailor Google Classroom specifically to your needs and I did use those great tips, but I still felt like something was lacking with my online setup.

I know we will all miss our traditional classroom models in August, but little changes can
make online learning a lot easier to manage successfully. Enter: Google Sites 

My colleague, Angela, mentioned she was interested in using it for the year so I took a look and started to explore. Bethany Wiekamp, a math teacher at my school site, was an excellent resource in doing this since she found great success with it during Distance Learning in the spring. She gave me great pointers and let me take a look at her site to see what she had done. Now that my Google Site is set up, I plan to have all class materials, lessons, and other reference on Google Sites in a more user-friendly format and link from there to Google Classroom for students to complete assignments.

Quick Tips to Get Started

Pages menu bar

1. Decide if you want to use Classic Sites or New Sites. Here's a quick side by side comparison that you can use to see the difference.  I used New Google Sites for my pages. Classic vs New Google Sites 
2. Decide what information you want on your site. This was the hardest part so I took our first unit and broke it down into categories of standards I taught. From there, I separated it into sub-pages where I will post my lessons as we work through the unit. For my ELA classes, I decided to use three main topic pages: Reading Comprehension, Writing, and Grammar. My team members decided to use more of a week by week calendar of resources. Whatever works for you is best!
 3. Create a layout of pages.  On the "pages" tab to the right, you can add pages and subpages just like you would files and folders. You can even hide pages under construction from student view until they are set to see. Also, the page can be continuously updated as the year goes on by just re-publishing it.

Sample assignment. I included a video link to the lesson.
To the left are step by step directions. Underneath the video
are buttons linking to the assignments in Google Classroom.

4. Add content. There are many layout options in the menu bar to the right. However, if you want to add content from your Google drive, it is easier to select these using the Google Drive icon from the "insert" menu.

5. Set up Google Classroom. This will help create a way to collect work from students and to send emails out as needed. Google Classroom works great with Google Sites.
6. When it's all set, publish and share with your students! You can decide how you want to share this. It can be shared publicly or you can share directly with students to control who has access and limit viewers only to OMSD users.

Link to a Google Sites template

Here's a tutorial on creating your own Google Site.

As always, reach out to me with any questions or concerns you may have. Good luck this year!

Keep the magic alive,

Kandyce Valverde