Google Sites

     The final tool we worked with was Google Sites.  According to Google “Google Sites is the easiest way to make information accessible to people who need quick, up-to-date access. People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world. The Google Sites web application is accessible from any internet connected computer”.  Basically, it supposed to be an easy way for people to create their own website.    

     All in all, I really did not like Google Sites.  This was not the first website that I have created.  Granted it has been several years since I created my last website, I used Netscape Navigator to create it.  I am the type of person that likes to jump into things and figure it out as I go, but this was extremely frustrating for me.  I found it to be very user unfriendly, it was just too complex to use.  To give an example, I wanted to embed a Custom Google Search Engine that I had created.  You would think that it would be extremely simple, just insert it, right?  No, I had to create my own Google Gadget and insert my search engine’s html code.  Well, it wasn’t even that simple.  Apparently Google used to have the GGE, Google Gadget Editor, but they stopped supporting it.  So, I had to generate my own gadget html code and then insert my search engine’s html code.  This probably took me at least an hour to figure out.  I was finally able to get help from this website.  I guess I just expected greater integration between Google pieces. 

     I also wanted to embed my TubeSnack playlist, but I had to seek help here to figure that out also.  However, I believe this difficulty was partly my own doing.  I could not have more than 5 videos in my playlist, and none of them could be longer than 5 minutes.  If I had decided to pay for the premium options I would not have had these limitations.  After much difficulty, I discovered that one of my videos was over 5 minutes.  So, I only accept partial responsibility for this difficulty since the limitations were not clearly defined.

     I did find that creating new pages in Google Sites was pretty easy.  All you had to do was click:

You can even name your page and decide where it attaches to the website:

     Once I got the hang of Google Sites I was finally able to put in the information that I wanted to put in.  I wanted to make a site that was useful for parents, students, and fellow educators.  Here is the link to my site.