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.