How I Use It
I created a classroom website using Google Sites. It was very user friendly and within a short time, I was able to have a platform for students and parents to reference what they would need to know about class. It was much easier to use then other platforms and I easily made necessary adjustments to customize it for my classroom. I use it for students to learn how to create their own websites as well and provide open communications about my classroom on the site. I can embed a class calendar, provide links to helpful resources, apps, and other websites, and keep communication open between students, parents and me. The mobile web and Google Sites don't always get along. So, some students have trouble navigating and viewing the site from their mobile devices. Sites are somewhat responsive on mobile, but have some development still to go.
My Take
Google sites is a user friendly tool and a great addition for Google. I would highly recommend it to use for a classroom website as well as student created websites for projects in their classes. They make it easy to embed other Google products, such as a Google Calendar, form, presentation, map, document or YouTube video. Some settings are not intuitive, such as removing the ability to comment on the page, which is a default setting, but this can easily can be adjusted. Also, editing the sidebar navigation is the most difficult setting to adjust. Finding where you edit the sidebar is not intuitive. The Sites editor could be greatly improved, if they had better ways to edit the different components of the page. This is especially needed for building sites from scratch without a template. Often, I find basic templates to be easiest to use for the novice website creator and then customization is much more intuitive.
