mSchools (Connecting Parents & Schools): Ways To Use Google Sites With Your Students

Friday 18 April 2014

Ways To Use Google Sites With Your Students

Google Sites is one of the best website creation software I have been recommending for teachers. There are a wide variety of reasons why Google Sites is an ideal platform to host your class website and here are some of them:

Google Sites is easy to use and has a student friendly interface.
You can set up your website within minutes without the need for any HMTL or CSS knowledge.
It provides highly customizable themes that you can easily apply to your site.
It is integrated with some other Google serves like Google Calendar.
Google Sites has a wonderful web-based editor that allows you to easily create, edit and share you content.
It provides a set of collaborative features including multiple editors and commenting.
Inserting images, videos, and other multimedia materials is ridiculously easy.
It provides a modest cloud storage capacity for you to upload documents, files, attachments, and PDFs.
And it is FREE.

Here is a comprehensive guide to help you learn more about how to create a website using Google Sites.

Below are some of the tips and ideas on how you can use Google Sites with your students in class:

Create a website for your class where you can share learning materials with your students.
Use the file cabinet option to upload documents and PDFs that your students can access anytime they want.
Create a blog inside your Google Sites using the Announcements template and start sharing updates about your class with your students.
Encourage students to use Google Sites to create digital portfolios displaying their best work.
Enhance collaborative and group work by inviting students to contribute to the Google Site or blog you created for your class. You can do this by adding your students as either owners (they can create new pages) or editors ( they can only edit existing pages).
Use it in group projects by assigning students to create their own pages and share them with each other.
Encourage peer review and peer editing by allowing students to post comments and feedback on each others pages.
If you use Google Calendar then you can have your calendar featured in your class website.
Embed videos, audio, presentations, and images that students can use when working on their projects andassignments.
Use it as a wiki where students can edit, comment, and add to each others work.