GOOGLE SITES - WIKI WIKI

Back in November as a Friday FAVORITES post, I shared a guide for Getting Started with Google Sites. The teacher I created it for was interested in using Google Sites as a tool for her students to create Grade 7 Science e-portfolios using their iPads. 

Google Sites is a great tool for students to create individual websites for projects and portfolios, but Google Sites is an even better tool for collaboration!

This week we set up a Google Site for the AP Core students to review for the AP exam. The teacher has used a variety of wiki tools in the past and was looking for a tool that would allow the girls to collaboratively create review sheets that would be shared with the entire class.Most importantly the teacher wanted to be able to easily see a detailed record of the contributions each student makes to the project.

ENABLE PAGE-LEVEL PERMISSIONS:
Google Sites page-level permissions allow the creator of the site to set different levels of access for different people on different pages. This means we were able to create one Google Site for the entire class with page containing a different topic. All of the students are able to view all of the pages, so that they can study all of the topics. Only the students responsible for posting on a specific topic are able to edit that page. SETTING UP PAGE-LEVEL PERMISSIONS

GET NOTIFIED WHEN A SITE OR PAGE CHANGES:
At the most basic level, selecting More > Manage Site > Recent Site Activity, the owner of a site is able to view the recent changes to the site, the date the change occurred, and the user responsible for the change.

Subscribing to the site will give you access to much more detailed information. Each time someone makes any sort of change, you will receive an email with a detailed acount of the changes that were saved. Because a new email is sent each and every time a change is made to the site, I recommend setting up an email rule to direct the emails to a specific folder - this will keep your inbox from getting overrun Google Sites emails. SUBSCRIBING TO SITE ACTIVITY

I am excited to see how this project will turn out, and what the feedback will be. If you are looking for a great collaborative tool, or for a way for students to create webpages and portfolios, let's talk about giving Google Sites a try!  As always, please let me know if there is anything I can do to help!

OTHER GREAT RESOURCES:
Beginner's Guide to Creating a Site (https://support.google.com)
Teacher's Guide Google Sites in the Classroom (www.educatorstechnology.com)
5 Ways to Use Google Sites in the Classroom (www.freetech4teachers.com)