Google Sites

Remember when you brought that project or assignment home from school and shared it with your parents? Chances are that project or paper, with an "A+" affixed to it~ of course, was displayed prominently on the refrigerator door for the entire family to see and enjoy.

Times have changed. Using Google Sites, students can now share their work with the world.

But this is a different type of project for many other reasons as well. Students apply 21st century digital citizenship skills with this one. Digital citizenship? Looking at blogs, memes and social media these days, it seems as though people have forgotten, or never learned for that matter, proper netiquette. Teaching a project like website design affords the perfect opportunity to share with students, and other adults, how they can conduct themselves online and still have respect for themselves. After all, the Internet never forgets.

In addition to netiquette, students can also benefit from a refresher of copyright guidelines and know that fair use may not apply in a case like website design. Linking videos from YouTube is a plus, but finding copyright-free pictures with the help Google images or Creative Commons may be time consuming yet absolutely necessary. Furthermore, students are not to include pictures of themselves or anyone else~especially if the site is open to the public and not just the school.

The process of assembling the Website is fairly easy but the students need guidance the first time they make one. In fact, I tend to forget and rely on my notes before instructing a class. In a recent class, the students made websites for Dante's Inferno. Each group of students was assigned a circle and they had to analyze it and make connections to mythology and our modern world. What a great project! They found videos, wrote their ideas, hyperlinked their text to their sources, used our online eBook and print collection, and shared relevant pictures. The students were encouraged to make their own (i.e. student-created) videos, and use their own pictures (remembering the rule mentioned above). Now this is Common Core.

What are some creative ideas for using Google Sites?
1. A business class can create a fictitious business and design a website promoting it.
2. A world history class could make a museum site for a specific moment in history.
3. In an American literature class students can have a website that they add to throughout the year where they can evaluate the novels, plays and poems they read.
4. Students in a geometry class can apply how geometry relates to the world outside the classroom.