Resolve to be Secure

With 2019 just around the corner, it's time to plan our resolutions for the new year.  Since 2018 seemed like a year of constant hacks, cyber attacks, and data breaches, here are the top ten resolutions you can take to be digitally secure in the new year.

1.  Protect Your Passwords

First and foremost, you should change your passwords to be long and complex (at least 10 characters, uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols).  You should absolutely change them right now if any of yours is on the list of the most popular passwords of 2018.  Also, you shouldn't have any of your usernames and passwords written on paper or in a file on your computer.  It's much too easy for people to see or steal them.

Since the average person has several different accounts, usernames, and passwords, it is very difficult to remember all of them.  The best option is to use a password manager.  With a password manager, you only have to remember one master password.  All your other usernames and passwords are remembered by the password manager.  It works like this:  you use your master password to log in to the password manager.  When you get to a website, the password manager automatically fills in your username and password for that website.  Password managers will also generate long, complex, and different passwords for your accounts to further increase security.  Note:  once you install a new password manager, let it change all your passwords to ones it generates.  Also, password managers will sync your usernames and passwords across multiple devices.  Your master password should be long and complex, but that's the only password you'll need to remember.  The two best password managers are Dashlane and LastPass, and both have excellent free versions.



2.  Strengthen Your Security Questions

Many websites will ask you security questions as a way to further secure your account.  However, people may be able to guess the answers to your security questions.  How can they guess?  They can research you online to find out past addresses, schools, relatives, marriages (maiden names), etc.  They can check your social media to find out the names of your pets, hobbies, interests, etc.  An easy way to make your security questions un-guessable is to include a secret character (number, letter, or symbol) before or after your answer.  For example, if it asks for your mother's maiden name, then your answer could be !Smith or SmithX.  You should update all your security answers to include this secret character.



3.  Use Two-factor Authentication

So, you're using a password manager to not only remember your usernames, but also to remember and use long, complex, and different passwords for all your accounts.  Great!  However, these could still be breached.  It's virtually impossible for a person or even a supercomputer to guess the long, complex passwords randomly generated by these password managers, but there is still a microscopic chance.  That's why you need to use two-factor authentication (TFA).  Most commonly, this is set up through your phone.  Once you enter an account's username and password, the website will send a code to your phone that you have to enter on the website as a final step to log in securely.  Even if somebody has managed to figure out your username and password, they won't have the code that was sent to your phone.  Unless your phone was stolen, which brings me to the next resolution.



4.  Secure Your Phone

Forget fingerprint and face locks on your phone.  Those can be easily breached.  If you don't believe me, then read this article, this one, this one, and this one.  The most secure way to protect your phone is through a PIN or password because only you can know it.  Make sure you don't use easy-to-guess PINs or passwords.  Yes, this is another one to remember, but, if you also use a password manager, then you only have two things to remember:  the master password to your password manager and the PIN/password to your phone.  That's absolutely do-able.  If there's an option to encrypt your phone, do it.  Finally, set up the "Find My Phone/Device" feature on your phone, so if it were ever lost or stolen, you can try to find it or remotely lock/wipe it.



5.  Change Your Router and Home Network Username and Password

I bet I could log in to most people's home router.  Why?  Most people don't change the default username and password for their home routers.  I can just go to routerpasswords.com and find the default username and password for any router I want.  Once logged in to your router, I could do all sorts of nefarious things to your network and devices.  Yet, I would never do that because I'm a good guy.  But, to keep out the bad guys, you should change the default username and password to your router to something that's hard to guess.  It's okay to write down this information somewhere safe.  Finally, make sure you have a tough-to-guess password for your home network/Wi-Fi.



6.  Use an Antivirus Program

Don't bother with free antivirus programs because they often don't have necessary features, such as real-time threat monitoring and prevention.  It's worth spending the $50 or so per year to protect your devices.  The only ones I recommend are Webroot, Bitdefender, and Avast.



7.  Use uBlock Origin

Trackers, malware, potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), and other nasty digital stuff can lurk in ads and pop-ups online.  The best adblock extension you can use is uBlock Origin.  Not only will it block these bad things, but it will make browsing the web a cleaner, faster, and more enjoyable experience.



8.  Do Updates

Keeping your devices and programs updated is one of the simplest, easiest, and best ways to increase security.  Software engineers, developers, and even white hat hackers are constantly on the lookout for vulnerabilities and creating patches to fix them.  Updates will also enhance the performance of your devices and programs, so make sure to install those updates.  You can even set updates to install automatically, so that's one fewer thing to remember.  You can usually find update preferences in the "Settings" app or menu of a device or program.  Finally, make sure to turn your devices off and on a couple times a week.  This will help with updates and give the devices a chance to "reset" to fix or prevent some issues.



9.  Lock Your Computer

Even if you've followed all these resolutions, your computer will still be vulnerable if you log in to it and then walk away.  Anyone can then use it while you're gone.  A quick and easy way to prevent this is to lock it.  If you need to leave your computer, press the Windows key (looks like a four-pane window next to the Alt key) and the L key at the same time.  This will lock your computer and require your password to unlock it.  To unlock it, press Ctrl, Alt, and Del at the same time as you normally would to log in, and then enter your password.  Many organizations and businesses take this very seriously and will "write up" or discipline employees who leave computers or other devices logged in and unlocked.



10.  Think Before You Click

Finally, think before you click on something:  a link, a picture, a download button, an attachment, etc.  Take a moment to pause and question if it's safe.  Does it look legitimate?  Is there anything off or sketchy about it (incorrect grammar, sensationalism, bright/flashing animation, "too-good-to-be-true"-ness, etc.)?  Does it come from a secure and trusted source?  You can mouse over a link (without clicking) to see where it leads.  Don't download or install anything unless you know it comes from a safe, trusted, and secure source.  When it doubt, close it out.  And never ever give out usernames, passwords, account information, or any other personal/private information to any unknown, untrusted, or questionable people or services online.

The end of the year is also a good time to clean out and organize your emails.  Here is a post I wrote about five steps you can take to have a better email experience.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, and secure New Year!

  

Educational Software Evaluation

My school uses a myriad of educational software and online learning programs.  In order to see if these are meeting the needs of the teachers and students, I developed an evaluation rubric to conduct a comprehensive assessment of each and every one that we use.  I would like to share it with all of you, so that you can use it for your own evaluations, or even tweak it to reflect your unique needs.  You can download the rubric here.  Finally, I would like to give a brief explanation of how the rubric works.

I identified ten areas by which to evaluate a software application or online program:

1. Curriculum & Standards Alignment:  How does the program align with our curriculum, standards, and learning goals?
2. Depth of Knowledge:  What Depth of Knowledge level does the program mostly align with?
3. Authenticity:  How is the content presented in an authentic, real-world manner?
4. Personalization & Adaptability:  How does the program personalize learning and adapt content for students?
5. Instructional Feedback & Reporting:  How does the program offer monitoring and reporting for the teacher?
6. Relearning Opportunities:  How does the program offer opportunities to re-answer questions, and what helpful information does it provide?
7. Ease of Use:  How easily can people use and navigate the program?
8. Engagement:  How does the program engage students?
9. Privacy:  Has the program signed the Student Privacy Pledge (studentprivacypledge.org)?
10. Redundancy:  How redundant is the program based on any similar programs we use?

I also included detailed descriptors for each of these areas, so evaluators will be on the same page.  The final score is out of 50 points, and there is a space for comments at the bottom of the rubric.  You could also turn this rubric into a Google Form or online survey to enable faster data-gathering and more dynamic analysis.  Hopefully, this will help you conduct a comprehensive, objective, and methodical assessment of any educational software or online learning program you use.

Teaching Digital Citizenship and Safety

In honor of it being National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, I thought it would be apropos to share a somewhat-related story of how my school is teaching digital citizenship and safety in hopes that it may help other schools and teachers do the same.  I have a link to our program at the end of this post.  You can also read my previous writings on digital citizenship here.  Digital citizenship and Internet safety are critical concepts that students must understand and apply in their own lives as their access to web-connected devices and services begin earlier and earlier.  After all, these devices and online services are tools, and, as with any tool, we must teach the uninitiated how to use them responsibly, safely, and intelligently lest they get themselves in trouble via misuse.

Not long after I started working at my school, I recognized the need to gather feedback, insights, and questions from the staff about the technology used throughout the school.  The effective exploration and integration of technology (or any other thing) are predicated on open collaboration, detailed planning, careful execution, and thoughtful reflection.  To this end, I formed and headed up the Technology Committee.

Last year, our main goal was to develop a unified series of lessons in Grades 3-5 to teach digital citizenship and safety.  Some teachers were already teaching various aspects of this, but there wasn’t a common curriculum.  We, the Technology Committee, sought to remedy this by creating a consistent and scaffolded program of lessons, so there were no overlaps or gaps in teaching these integral skills and the lessons would build on each other throughout the grades.  We also wanted to schedule these lessons at the beginning of the school year to lay a solid foundation on which to build later and head off any student misuse of technology.  Finally, we understood teachers have much to teach already, so we focused on core lessons and divided the teaching of those lessons between the classroom teacher, the Library/Media teacher, and the Makerspace teacher.  I went into the classrooms to teach some lessons as well, which was very fun.  We thought it would be beneficial for the students to learn about digital citizenship and safety from different people, who could offer unique perspectives on the subject.

Like any good creator (or artist), we took bits and pieces from existing lessons and resources, modified them to meet our vision, and quilted them together in a final product.  We didn’t want to rely all on one source for these lessons.  To promote unification and scaffolding, we borrowed an idea from Google’s Be Internet Awesome program and put our lessons into four pillars or units that would cross all three grades:  Be Digitally Kind (Unit 1), Be Digitally Safe (Unit 2), Be Digitally Responsible (Unit 3), and Be Digitally Savvy (Unit 4).  Each grade would be learning lessons in the same pillar at the same time to bring a cohesiveness to the program.  We put three lessons in each of those units:  one for the classroom, one for Library/Media, and one for Makerspace.  We chose lessons that would complement the theme of those units, put them in an order that would build on each other, and ended each grade with a lesson that we felt synthesized all the units.  In total, we had twelve lessons for each grade.  Our goal was to complete one unit each month:  Unit 1 in September, Unit 2 in October, Unit 3 in November, and Unit 4 in December.

Thus far, our program has been going very well.  Of course, this is our first year implementing it, so we are actively reflecting on it and looking for ways to improve it.  Also, we will brainstorm ways to build on these lessons later in the year to reinforce the learning.  We are thinking of having each grade do some kind of project-based/real-world assignment that can authentically make use of what they have learned.

I wanted to share the program we developed with all of you in hopes that it may be of some help teaching these valuable and essential skills.  Click here to view it.  If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me via Twitter.  My handle is @BurchTech.

Chrome Extensions for Students with Special Needs

There are countless Google Chrome extensions that can help both teachers and students. I’ve written about some of them, and you can read about those here. For this post, I wanted to share four Google Chrome extensions that can be very useful for students with special needs.


OpenDyslexic Font

From its extension overview:  “Open-Dyslexic is an open sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. This extension overrides all fonts on web pages with the OpenDyslexic font, and formats pages to be more easily readable.

Your brain can sometimes do funny things to letters. OpenDyslexic tries to help prevent some of these things from happening. Letters have heavy weighted bottoms to add a kind of "gravity" to each letter. You are able to quickly figure out which part of the letter is down because of this feature. It aids in recognizing the correct letter and sometimes helps to keep your brain from rotating them around. Consistently weighted bottoms can also help reinforce the line of text. The unique shapes of each letter can help prevent confusion by flipping and swapping.

Open-Dyslexic has recently received favourable coverage from the BBC (http://bbc.com/news/technology-19734341) and is included in many iOS and Android apps. Unlike much other dyslexia or DRD typefaces, OpenDyslexic is completely free for individuals, companies, schools, and in short: everyone.”



Speech Recognition Anywhere

From its extension overview:  “With ‘Speech Recognition Anywhere’ you can control the Internet with your voice. Use voice recognition to fill out forms and documents on the web! Dictate emails with speech to text! Use Voice Recognition to fill out any form and dictate email with speech to text. Control the Internet with custom voice commands!

No need to copy and paste your speech into a form input field. The speech you speak is automatically typed into any form on any web page handsfree. You can also browse the web and completely control a website with voice commands. It can be used like a virtual assistant. Speech Recognition Anywhere now includes text to speech, custom voice commands and scripting. See seabreezecomputers.com/speech for more information.”



Colorblind – Dalton

From its extension overview:  “Dalton is software allowing people with different kinds of color blindness (colour vision deficiency) to see more colors. Dalton provides solutions to some of the everyday problems experienced by colour blind people. People with various types of colour deficiency could benefit from the use of Dalton software including those affected by Tritanopia (blue colour vision deficiency), Deuteranopia (green), Protanopia (red).

People generally have the assumption that if you suffer from blue-yellow color blindness these are the only colors you have trouble seeing. But that’s wrong. Color blindness doesn’t relate to just two color shades you can’t distinguish, it is the whole color spectrum which is affected. The extension is totally free. The main aim is to help people to see the world colorful.



BeeLine Reader

From its extension overview:  “BeeLine's color gradient makes reading faster/easier for over 90% of people. How much will it help you?

Have a lot to read? Make reading easier and faster using BeeLine Reader! BeeLine uses a color gradient to guide your eyes from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This seemingly simple tweak makes reading substantially easier and faster because it allows you to transition between lines quickly and effortlessly. Thousands of people have taken our online diagnostic test, and over 90% of them saw a benefit from BeeLine. Many people are able to read 20% or 30% faster with BeeLine, even on their first try.

Research by educators has shown dramatic reading fluency and comprehension gains for students, and research with adults is ongoing at Stanford Medical School. BeeLine has been adopted by the California Public Library System, Bookshare.org, and Reading Is Fundamental. The BeeLine extension works on millions of news websites and blogs, and you can even use read Kindle books, Google Docs, and Gmail with it. You can also get our PDF extension, which works on any text-based PDF.

You can read as much as you want with BeeLine for two weeks days. After that, you can use BeeLine up to 5 times every day for free, or subscribe to BeeLine Reader Pro for just $2/month (or less if you subscribe annually). Students and teachers can also apply on our website for our free Student Pass (certain limitations apply).”

How to Go Paperless at School

According to an analysis done by The Paperless Project, 68 million trees are used to make paper and paper products in the United States every year.  This analysis also finds that the global consumption of paper has increased by 400% in the past 40 years.  Additionally, The Paperless Project states that the pulp and paper industry is the fourth largest industrial user of energy.  It’s time that we embrace the many powerful and efficient digital tools to go paperless and save money, energy, time, and our environment.

Here are 10 great benefits of leaving paper and going digital:

1. Reduced paper costs
2. Reduced toner/ink and printer maintenance costs
3. Less electricity costs from running printers and copiers
4. Faster, more engaging, and more collaborative dissemination of information through digital media
5. Easier and quicker access to and searching of digital documents
6. Less physical space needed to store paper documents
7. More secure storage of digital documents
8. Less time lost to printing and copying documents
9. People learning and mastering digital tools of communication
10. More environmentally-friendly

 Also, you’ll have fewer paper cuts, and those are the worst!

Here are five free digital tools that schools can use to go paperless:

G Suite Apps & Google Classroom

If your school is a Google school, then these are a given.  Within G Suite, staff and students can create all sorts of digital documents and then share, collaborate, edit, assess, organize, and archive them.  Setting up shared folders and Team Drives is also a great way to spread information.  The Save to Google Drive Chrome Extension is a valuable tool to save almost anything you find on the Internet directly to your Google Drive in one click to make the curation of digital resources quick and easy.

Other than Google Drive and its associated apps, Google Classroom is almost a one-stop-shop in and of itself to have a paperless classroom.  Within Google Classroom, teachers can post announcements, reminders, polls, quizzes, assignments, as well as direct links to documents.  Teachers can also collect assignments submitted by students, provide feedback, and send it back to students.  Teachers can keep parents in the loop by inviting them to their Google Classroom as well.  To instantly share documents or a website to students in class on their Chromebooks, teachers can use the Share to Google Classroom Chrome Extension.

Teachers, students, and other school staff can use Blogger and/or Google Sites to share information with parents or anyone else in the school community.  Blogger and Google Sites are also good to use for displaying student work, activities, and events.

Here are excellent resources on getting the most out of the G Suite apps and Google Classroom:

Google Classroom Video Tutorial

Google Classroom Tips

How to Use the Google Classroom Extension

Google Drive Video Tutorials

Google Docs Video Tutorials

Google Slides Video Tutorials

Google Forms Video Tutorials

Google Forms Tips

Google Sheets Video Tutorials

10 Important Google Sheets Tips for Teachers

PDF Conversion

You can use a copier’s Scan to PDF feature or use a standalone scanner to convert all your paper documents into PDF files.  Using a copier to do this is the easiest and quickest way since you can load several pages into the feeder at once.  If you don’t have a copier or a scanner, you can use your smartphone.  I recommend the CamScanner app, which will let you take a photo of any document, edit it (if you want), and convert it into a PDF.

Print Friendly Chrome Extension

This useful Chrome extension lets you remove text, images, and whole pages from things you find on the Internet, which will help you save toner and paper if you really do need to print something.  Print Friendly also has features to convert a webpage or online article into a PDF and/or email it.  To learn more about how to make the most of Print Friendly, check out my article about it.  Download Print Friendly here.

Remind

Remind is an app to help improve communication between teachers, students, and parents.  With Remind, teachers can send text messages, voice clips, photos, PDFs, and more directly to students’ and parents’ smartphones.  Remind has earned the FERPA and COPPA privacy badges from iKeepSafe.

Here’s a video about Remind:

Padlet

Padlet is an online application to create, share, and collaborate on digital bulletin boards.  Users can access Padlet on a smartphone, tablet, or computer to post almost anything to a Padlet board, such as photos, documents, videos, music, Google files, and more.  Users can also comment on them to give feedback, suggest ideas, and ask questions.  Padlet is a great way to share and curate information and resources.

Here's a video about Padlet:

These tools will help schools save money, energy, and the environment all while improving productivity, communication, and collaboration.

Create and Book Appointments with Google Calendar

The work days of teachers and school administrators are nothing short of busy.  One of the more difficult things to coordinate amidst all the hustle and bustle is meetings.  Finding common free times, making appointments, canceling appointments, and just remembering it all is a huge task in and of itself.  Google Calendar has a hidden gem of a feature called “Appointment Slots” to make all of this simple, efficient, and easy.

Appointment Slots is exactly what you think it is.  It is a way to create a calendar with customizable time slots that people can reserve for meetings, conferences, or any other kind of appointment.  I’m thinking of using this feature to create calendars for teachers to reserve the use of iPad carts, so there are plenty of other uses for this feature besides personal appointments.  Here’s how to create your own Google appointment calendar:

1.  Sign in to your school Google account, and open Calendar.

2.  You can use your existing calendar, or you can create a new calendar just for appointments.  I recommend creating a new calendar to use only for this purpose.

3.  On the left side of the screen, click the + sign next to “Add a coworker’s calendar”.  Then, click “New calendar”.

4.  Name your calendar and add a description if you want.

5.  Once you’ve created the new calendar, click the calendar itself on the date for which you want to create appointment slots.  Then, click “Appointment slots”.  Now, you can adjust the title, date, time, and duration of slots.  You can also click “More Options” to change other things.  Click “Save” to finish creating them.

6.  To have people book appointments, click on the title of the appointments on your Calendar.  Then, click “This calendar’s appointment page”.  This will open a webpage to book the appointments.  Copy the URL of this webpage and send it to whomever you want to book appointments.  People must have a Google account to book appointments.  They can book appointments by clicking on an available slot, and then clicking “Save”.  They can return to this page to cancel or change their appointment.

This is what the appointments page looks like:

You and the people booking appointments will get notifications and reminders through Calendar.  Since teachers and school administrators do so much through Google as it is, this is an efficient way to make the scheduling and managing of meetings easier and simpler.

5 Steps to Optimize Your Email

According to research done by the Radicati Group, an estimated 11.2 billion emails were sent every hour of every day across the world in 2017.  The research also found that an average office worker received 121 emails and sent 40 emails per day.  Email was the preferred method of communication for 86% of professionals.  In light of this digital deluge, the efficient management of emails is an important way to bring clarity and calm to your work life.  Here are five steps you can take to tame the wild world of email.  I will be focusing on Gmail, but these steps can apply to any email service.

1.  Purge

If you were to take only one of these steps, this is by and far the most transformative.  Simply put, delete all the emails you truly don’t need.  Decluttering your inbox (or anything else for that matter, such as a room or a car) will make it much easier to find things, and it will make the things you still have easier to manage.  In Gmail, check the box next to the emails you want to delete.  Once you have all those selected, click the trash can icon near the top of the page to delete them.  The deleted emails will still be in your Gmail trash, and you can go there to permanently delete them.

2.  Unsubscribe

Over the years, you have probably signed up to get emails for a variety of sources.  You may also be getting emails from places where you didn’t sign up.  Spam filters are usually good at detecting and removing spam emails, but many unwanted or useless emails still get to your inbox.  There is a quick and easy way to reduce the number of emails you get by unsubscribing from them.  At the bottom of an email is usually a link that you can click to unsubscribe or update your email preferences for that sender.  Just click on that link and unsubscribe.  Here is what those links may look like:

3.  Organize

The first two steps will greatly reduce the number of emails you have in your inbox, which will make this step of organization much easier.  In this step, you will create labels for you Gmail.  These are essentially folders that you can drag and drop emails into to categorize and organize them.  This will help you manage all your emails and make it easier to find them since they’ll be in categories.  On the left side of Gmail, you will see “Inbox”.  Scroll down that left side until you see “More” with a down arrow next to it.  Click on “More”, scroll down, and then click on “Create new label”.  Now, you can name the label something like “Lesson Plans” or “Parents” or “Administration”.  Once you have created all the labels you want, you can drag and drop your emails into these labels.

4.  Use Email Groups

In a school or business, there are always certain groups of people we email on a regular basis.  Typing in each recipient in the To field (and even remembering all the people you want to include) can be tedious and time-consuming.  Having a ready-made email group makes the sending and organizing of emails faster and easier.  Email groups can be handy for teachers as they can create groups for parents, committees, courses, extracurricular activities, etc.  Below are screenshots and instructions on how to do this yourself in Gmail.

First, click the down arrow next to “Mail”, and then click on “Contacts”.

Next, click on “New Group...”, and then name the group.

Now, you can add people to the group.  Click the button with the plus sign, and then type in the email addresses of the people you want in the group.  When you’ve included all of them, click “Add”.

On the Contacts page, you can select a group to email.  Or you can return to the Mail page (click the arrow next to Contacts), compose a new email, and type the name of the group in the To field.

5.  Undo Send

We have all experienced that sinking feeling in the moment after sending an email you wish you didn’t send.  Gmail has a way of making that wish come true.  There is an undo send feature in Gmail that gives you the ability to stop an email from being sent even if you already hit the send button.  When you’re in Gmail, click the gear icon on the right side of the screen.  Then, click “Settings”.  Click the box next to “Enable Undo Send”, and then select the amount of time you want to give yourself to undo a sent email:  5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.  Once you have undo send enabled, a narrow window will appear at the top of your Gmail inbox with the option of undoing the sent email and showing you how much time you have left to do it.

Hopefully, these steps will help you live a more manageable, organized, and efficient email life.

Tour of the New Google Sites

The students who are now in our classrooms are digital citizens through and through, having grown up with computers and the Internet at their fingertips.  Teachers are asking them to become more than digital consumers.  Students are now being given the opportunity to become digital creators, which activate and strengthen many important skills.  One tool that teachers can use to not only improve classroom communication, but to also allow students to be digital creators is the new Google Sites.

The new Google Sites is a vast improvement over what is now called Classic Google Sites.  The new Google Sites offers trendy modern aesthetics, increased ease of use, and adaptability to PCs and mobile devices.  It provides many other cool features that you can explore once you get into it.  Since many schools use G Suite for Education, the new Google Sites is a perfect tool to integrate into a classroom as it works seamlessly with all the other G Suite apps.  Teachers can use it to give their students, families, and coworkers a look inside their classrooms.  Students can use it for a variety of projects for different subjects.  I’m going to give you a tour of the new Google sites below.

You get to Google Sites in Google Drive, and all the Sites you create will be in your Drive.  Just right-click in Drive, and you’ll see the following menu.

At the top of Google Sites, you’ll see a place to name your site as well as buttons for undo, redo, preview, link, share, options, and publish.

You can also add a logo that will appear as a small image in the upper left corner of your Site.  You even have the option of using the color from the logo as a color theme for your Site.

You have three options for the size of the banner:  large banner, banner, and title only.  The “title only” is the smallest of the banner, making the content of your website appear farther to the top of the page.

You can change the background image of the banner to one of your own images, or you can choose one from Google’s gallery of images.

Double-click anywhere in the blank area of your site to make the insert menu appear, where you can insert a text box, image, or file from Drive.  You can also use the menu on the right side of the screen to get insert options.  If you want to add a footer to your website, you can do that from the insert menu as well.

The menu of insert options on the right side of the screen provides more features, such as inserting a divider, YouTube video, Google Calendar, Google Map, or something from Google Drive.  You can also easily move these items around your page and resize them to fit your layout.

The Pages tab is where you’ll go to create, name, and organize pages and subpages on your Site.

You can style your Site with any of the available themes under the Themes tab.  If you know the hex color code for a particular color, you can configure that too.

Click the gear near the top of the page to choose between top navigation or side navigation.  You can click the eye icon near the top of the page to preview your Site and how it would look on a PC, tablet, and smartphone.

Finally, you can publish your Site by clicking the Publish button at the top of the page.  Here, you’ll get access to publishing settings and the ability to unpublish it if you want to take it offline.

For more information about using Google Sites, check out this video tutorial.

Google Sites gives teachers and students many exciting opportunities to become digital creators and integrate multi-faceted learning opportunities into classrooms.