10 Tips For Building Google Sites With Students

It’s been an exciting start to the term for our Year 5 students, commencing a unit of work on animal adaptations as part of the Science and Technology syllabus. I set the context for the project with an animation I created using PowToon. In the video students have been commissioned to work for the CSIRO to discover and document the adaptations of an Australasian animal. Their work will be showcased as a Google Site. The websites will then form an outdoor virtual gallery in the school garden, where images of animals with a corresponding QR code will be displayed for the school community. We have only just commenced this innovative project, but here are 10 tips for building Google Sites with students.

1. Interactivity: Challenge your students to go beyond images and text. Interactivity is very easy with the many G Suite extensions. My students will embed a mind map using Mindomo, a flow chart using LucidChart, interactive images using Poly 3D, augmented reality using Tour Creator and animation using Gifmaker. 
2. Images: Teach students how to source beautiful, quality and copyright free images. My students use Unsplash, Pixabay and Flickr as their first choice to find images. Next they use Google Images, but can only select images that are labelled for reuse. It is also important that students look a the quality of the image and choose pictures that have a high pixel count. 
3. Publish Settings: Think about your school context and what publish settings are most appropriate. Some schools actively promote showcasing student work online in order to create an authentic audience. Other schools prefer to have student work only accessible to parents and the school community in order to protect the digital footprint of students.
4. Collaborate: The power of Google Sites is that they are seamless for collaboration. Have students work in groups with key responsibilities and roles in a project. Collaboration and teamwork is a vital skill for our students as they move towards a 21st century workforce.
5. Project Folder: The first step to a collaborative Google Site is creating a Google Drive folder that has the correct publish settings. Then the Google Site and all of the content for the website should be saved in this project folder. Objects embedded from Google Drive will not appear for other viewers if the sharing settings are not correct.
6. Sample: It can be very effective to create a sample website that provides a scaffold and also generates excitement for the final product. For the Year 5 adaptations unit I created a sample website on the Thorny Devil.
7. Checklist: Create a Google Doc that is a checklist for criteria that must be included in the website. As students add an element they can make note of the completion date. Each student can copy the checklist and create their own version in their shared Google Drive project folder. This allows the teacher to track student progress. Include extension options for gifted students and reduce the criteria for students with learning difficulties.
8. Avatar: To create a sense of ownership, have students add an avatar and biography to the home page. This is an opportunity for discussing thoughtful and safe online publishing, as using an avatar is personal but not identifiable. I used Avatar Maker with my Year 5 students.
9. Class Site: It is really valuable for students to be able to view one another’s websites in order to be inspired and provide feedback to their peers. Create a Google Site that has all of the students’ websites hyperlinked as a landing page for the cohort.
10. Showcase: Consider how you can showcase student work in a way that provides purpose and audience. Our garden gallery will place the student work in an authentic context and will be viewed by students, teachers and parents.