Small victories with Google Sites

I spent the spring and summer creating a website that would be home base for a technology professional development program at CJ. I created it using Google Sites, partially because I was modeling it after a program that had been done on Google Sites and partially because I just wanted to explore yet another of Google's products.

I'm a little obsessed now.

I know that my work isn't the most complex when it comes to  web design. I still haven't learned HTML code (when I asked a friend who works in web publishing for a big newspaper about recommended font and font size for a text heavy website, his response that his paper's "tags are 1.4em on a line height of 1.6em" left me dumbfounded). And I still don't understand a lot of what goes on in the background of websites regarding analytics and search engines. But for designing a site that is really only meant for internal use at work, it was an excellent tool for this amateur.

The Tech Charge Challenge website is staying private right now, so I made a copy of the website (small victory when I discovered how!) to make public and removed any personal data from teachers. That's what I've linked here. It isn't perfect (still needs a few tweaks and tutorials), but I'm pretty proud.

A few weeks ago, I decided to make another, much simpler, website as a home for any and all technology-related professional development resources and opportunities at CJ. Small victories all over the place as I set up this page. I created links using images to represent my main websites. I embedded a Google calendar on an "announcement" page. I even figured out how to give only teachers at CJ permission to edit a "list" page (and only that page) so they can add web tools to the list. Now I'm ready to put tools into the list and find a reason to use other templates.

Sometimes on a Monday, we just need to celebrate those small victories.


For more info about Google Sites, check out...

• Beginner's Guide to Creating a Site from Google Site's Help Center
• Mary Fran's Getting Started with Google Sites (a Google Site from a Google Certified Teacher)
• 47 Page Guide to Google Sites for Teachers from Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers

Curious how you can use Google Sites in the classroom? Check out...

• How to Manage Classroom Digital Portfolios by Using Page-level Permissions in Google Sites from Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers
• 5 Ways to Use Google Sites in Schools from Richard Byrne
• Google Sites for Teacher Web Pages and Student Projects from Flipped Education - this page contains links to many example pages and resources