1. Sarah Marr marrsar@gmail.com
Google Sites
Sarah Marr

2. Learner Outcomes To create a Google Site for your classroom. (3 min)
Google Sites is a free web creation tool through Google. The only requirement for creating a google site is to have a google account. In what ways do you think a website could be a useful classroom tool? 30 seconds, turn & talk.
Classroom calendars/updates, webquests/online research projects, parent updates/communication, student work portfolios/exemplary work, assignments/rubrics/forms, assessment resource
Today we are going to create a google site for your classroom.

3. Agenda Welcome/Overview Design Edit Add Prepare to Publish
Reflection/Evaluation
(1 min)

4. Go to Google Sites www.sites.google.com (2 min)
There are two ways to access Google sites: 1) Go to and login to your Google account. 2)Login to Google Drive & click on the 3x3 box of squares-this icon represents all Google Applications.
Click More to see more options. Continue clicking “more” at the bottom of the window until you are directed to the google app product page

5. (1 min)
Scroll down to Home & Office.
Under home & office you will see many of the Google Apps that are helpful in the classroom. Click on “sites” in the right column.

6. Click Create
(1 min)
One of the many benefits of Google Drive is that it stores all of your work, even past sites that you created. You can see the previous sites
that I have made. At the end of the day we will discuss & share the many ways you can utilize Google Sites beyond a classroom website.
Click Create.

7. Select Template
(1 min)
The first step is to select a template for your site. I recommend to “browse the gallery for more” because there are classroom site templates available for you.

8. Select a template (5 min)
Under Schools & Education, you will be able to see many template options for you to choose. Once you click on a template, then you can click select at the bottom of the window.

9. Design your site
(5 min)
First, name your site! The name of your site will appear as the title of your site, so be sure to label it appropriately. Since I taught all 6th grade reading, I could name my site according to my class. However, the following year I taught 8th grade. You are able to edit the Name of your Site beyond this point.
Second, customize your URL or web address. Google will suggest a URL for you depending on your site name. You may edit this. Note that you cannot change this url after you click “Create.” *If the URL is being used by another person, then Google will prompt you to modify your URL address.

10. Design your site (1 mins)
The theme is an automatically generated background. Since we have a Classroom Template, a background is already included for you so you do not need to complete this step. However, a user who selected a “blank template” might want to select a theme to help get them started.

11. Design your site
(1 min)
If you click the arrow to the left of “more options” you have the option of describing your site. We will not complete this portion today, however you should know that this tool allows others to search for your website within your school’s domain.

12. Create! (1 min) Scroll up to the top. Click Create.
Remember, if it doesn’t allow you to create, it is usually because the “site location” is already taken. Simply modifty the site location URL. I changed mine to Msmarrteach and it worked.

13. Change your mind?
(2 min)
Here you can manage all aspects of your site: review the pages layout under pages, see all attachments-rename/upload them, even view your deleted items.
Change the Site title--General
Change the theme--Themes, Colors, Fonts
Once you make a change, you must click the save button at the top of the page or your revisions will be lost.

14. Home Page
(3 min)
This is the view of your homepage If you were to publish the website, this is the content that viewers would see. Before we edit this with our own content, let’s highlight some of the functions.
What are some things you notice on your home page? 45 seconds to turn & talk with a partner. Sidebar w/links to different pages, ability to upload photos, links to websites, template tips (bottom of sidebar), print page option at bottom of site.

15. Tools
(2 min)
On the top right of your homepage, you will see four icons that you will use throughout designing your site.
The first pencil icon= edit. You will click on this anytime you want to edit the content of the exisiting page that you are viewing.
The Paper Plus sign= add new page to your site.
Tire icon= menu bar wher you can modify page actions, page templates, and site actions.
Lastly, GLOBE= share or publish your site. You can always go back and edit your site when necessary.

16. Edit Content
(2 min)
After clicking on the edit icon (pencil) on the top right hand side of the page, you are able to edit any of the items by hovering over that text box and clicking on it once it’s highlighted. Note that this will not change the text in the Navigation pane. The text on the Navigation pane are edited when you change the titles to the pages when editing the home page.

17. Format Text BOLD, ITALICS, UNDERLINE UNDO/ REDO REMOVE FORMAT
HYPERLINK
INDENTS
LISTS
ALIGNMENT
FONT
TYPE
FONT
SIZE
FONT & HIGHLIGHT COLOR
(15 min)
When editing a page, it’s very important to click the blue “save” button at the top of the screen. Otherwise, your edits won’t be saved.

18. Edit site layout
(7 min)
Click on the menu icon. Then, click “edit site layout” or shift+L.
Header: this includes a header display for your site. By clicking this tab, you can turn this function on or off.
Horizontal navigation allows you to create tabs that run horizontally across your home page. By clicking this tab you can keep or eliminate this option. To create the tabs, click on the text below it that says “click to edit horizontal navigation.” From there you will “add tabs” from the pages that already exist in the template.
Sidebar: By clicking this tab you can keep or eliminate this option.
Custom Footer: Here I, typically, put permanent/essential information like my contact information or a quote/vocabulary word that will guide our learning through the year.
In Edit Site Layout, you can also edit the side bar or get rid of it. WIth you mouse, hover over the sidebar to edit the Navigation page titles. Once you click, you can edit everything from the heading to the pages included. I changed the title of my sidebar to “Tabs.” You can delete items as well. I decided to delete the “take the poll” icon. Until I have meaningful weekly polls or assessments, I will leave that off of my sidebar.

19. Check-In Welcome/Overview Design Edit Add Prepare to Publish
Reflection/Evaluation
(1 min)

20. Add Image
(5 min)
There are two ways to add an image: 1)save an image to your desktop to upload. 2) Copy the URL of an image online.
Find an image to save to your desktop. Click the grey “upload images” icon. Select the image you would like to insert. Click “open.” Select the image once it loads and click “ok.”

21. Add Video
(5 min)
To insert a video, you first need to go to Youtube & copy the link for your desired video. I love Kid President videos, so I knew I wanted to include some of his wisdom/character education on my home page.
Open a new tab, go to youtube.com. Search for a video that you could use. If you can’t think of one, I suggest using a Kid President video. Copy the url by highlighting it and clicking command+C or right click+copy/edit-copy.
Next, return to the tab that has your Google Site. Click “Insert”-”Youtube.” Paste the URL into the blue highlighted box by clicking command+v or right click+paste/edit=paste.
Finally, click save.
Notice that the video has the same formatting toolbar as the image.
*If you have a video in your google drive, then you need to go to the “Drive” option and locate it from there.

22. Add Calendar (5 min) Insert--Calendar.
You will see all of your existing calendars. Click on your personal calendar, then click “select.”
You will see an options menu pop up. Here you can change the height of the calendar. Under view, you can select different views like weekly or monthly.
Select your timezone.
Finally, click “save” and “ok”. It will insert your calendar.

23. Add Google Drive
(5 min)
Also, by clicking “insert” you can link the homework to any item in your google drive. You need to create the item before attempting to add the link on the site. What other things would you like to insert that could be useful for your curriculum/class/homework/review/etc.? Think-pair-share. Instructional videos, google hangout disucssions, forms to submit work, calendar of upcoming assessments, charts advertising class incentives, exemplary student work.

24. Prepare for Publishing
(2 min)
Before publishing your site, there are a few things to do. Go to your menu icon.
1) I recommend going to each page to review how it will be seen by clicking on preview page as viewer. If you are pleased with your product
2) click on manage site.

25. Manage Site
(1 min)
One important option that I recommend selecting under “general” is to allow the site to adjust to mobile phones. Now, students can access the site easily from all of their devices. Scroll down & find “Mobile.” Click save.

26. Sharing & Permission (3 min)
The default setting is private. To change that click the blue share button in the top right corner. Next to “who has access” you can click “change” to modify your options. Since you are working in a Google Apps for Education domain, you have the options to make sites available to: anyone in the school domain, only people at the school with the link, specific people.
If you share with specific people, you must decide what level of permission you want to grant them.

27. Sharing & Permission-Advanced
(1 min)
This is for the advanced Google Site creators: Page Level Permission allows you to have certain people control certain pages of you site. Potentially, you could create a student page where they can add/edit/monitor content. You could use this as an incentive, job, assignment for your classroom.

28. Sharing & Permission (1 min)
For example, I like to have one classroom job as a Web Master. This student applied for the job and when selected is in charge of my class announcements page since I like to have weekly updates but I’ve found it is too much for me to maintain with grading, analyzing data, planning, etc.
I clicked “change” on top right & then selected the User Custom Permissions to manually add or remove users (students).

29. Reflection
(3 min)
Questions?
Comments?
Ah-ha moments?

30. https://sites.google.com/site/ gappssummitnj/evaluation
Tweet about this session:
#EduscapeSummit
(2 min)