This post is going to be about 10 new features of Google Sites. My article is titled NEW Google Sites: 10 things teachers must know by Matt Miller found on Ditch that Textbook. Matt Miller is a former educator, author of Ditch that Textbook, a Google certified innovator and one of the top 10 influencers in educational technology.
His article about the new Google Sites, discusses advanced Google has made. Miller has a video tutorial that describes each new advancement. He also lists and discusses each of the 10 new features. The biggest new feature is the ability to click and drag content where you want it. All you have to do is click the content you want and drag it up, down or to the side of the page. This content can be a text box, image or an embedded source. I am going to combine features two and nine, because Sites allows to share your site with anyone who has the link. You can also allow others to edit the material on the site. This would be a great resource to share projects and information with parents.
Pre-designed themes make Google Sites easy and quick to use, along with the ability to embed from Google. According to Miller (2017), “Embedding is taking interactive elements from a website and putting them on your website. Google Sites makes it easy with three options: YouTube, Calendar and Map.” You can also add interactive Google files on Sites.
Any device will work be it a laptop, tablet or smartphone with Sites. It has a feature called responsive design, that customizes the features to these devices. One negative response Google has received is that you can not privately share pages within the Site. Along with the file cabinet disappearing. This feature allowed users to view a list of all the files on your Site.
Miller’s last two ideas were how students could explicitly use Google Sites. The first one is how to give students work a larger audience. “If they create their work on a Google Site, they can showcase their hard work to a larger audience — anyone they share the link to their website,” states Miller (2017.) The last idea he had was using Google Sites to create video tutorials to help students remember a past topic. Miller (2017) talks about directing students to the site to review the topic. This could also be helpful for parents at home helping their children do their work.
I enjoyed how this article featured just the new improvements since Google Sites has created a new platform for users.
References
Miller, M. (2017, January 24). NEW Google Sites: 10 things teachers must know. Retrieved June 25, 2019, from Ditch that Textbook website: http://ditchthattextbook.com/2017/01/24/new-google-sites-10-things-teachers-must-know/
