GAIN - Performance Record Sites

The time has come. It is the final blog post for CPED 5005. For this final post, we will take a look at my wiki experience (as amateur as it was) with Google Sites. Here you can find my very bad excuse for a website. While it looks rather elementary, I put quite a bit of "blood, sweat, and tears" into getting it to this point. I believe that this is another one of Google's apps that just takes some extra practice. I have never set any page up before so I was starting from scratch when it comes to the knowledge and understanding.

I began this project by using the completely blank template. This made it very easy to see where things were going. I started by getting the pages set up under the home page. This was not very hard either. This are internal links and the instructions were pretty clear on how to accomplish this. I did have a hard time (and never really got) how to add external links to the sidebar. I did get some external links posted in the entertainment section (TeacherTube and a local education board website). This was not difficult either. I was having a lot of trouble, though, formatting the pages how I wanted them. From the best I could tell, you have to work in blocks and inside the square (or at least that's all I could do). I would like it more if there was availability (or I could find it) to use the whole screen and be "outside the box." Even if you had to stay in the box, it would be nice to be able to click and drag anywhere within that box. I do like the history of revisions area. This helped me out a few times as I would mess up what I was trying to accomplish. It was like starting with a fresh canvas without starting all over.

Overall, this is more than likely something I will be using. A teacher website is almost a staple these days because it allows students and parents to connect with what is going on inside the classroom. Parents can keep an eye on what is being taught and be encouraged to help out at home with assignments. This can also be a great place to keep particular documents that the students will certainly forget to take home with them. For these reasons, I will continue to look at and study up on how to make my website the best it can be. It needs to be easy to navigate and contain the best information possible for it to be useful.