Review of Google Sites as a platform Class portal

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2.1

 Purpose: the intended purpose for Google Sites (which is a Software as a Service platform from Google Inc) is to host the class portal.

2.2

 Example: Here is one of the class portal that I hosted on google sites in 2010:

             https://sites.google.com/site/cseduos/

2.4

 [Disclaimer: I donot have any association with Google INC. I am just reviewing Google sites as I have used it extensively in my teaching since 2008. ]

 

2.5

 Google sites (https://sites.google.com/) is a software as a service provided by Google Inc for hosting and managing web portals. It is free for use for up to 100 MB storage of contents. I have used it since 2008 as a class portal for distributing lecture slides, reading materials, sharing links for audio-video content, assignments and practical lab worksheet distribution. Google sites has the option to control who can access the site and monitor access patterns through linking the site through google analytics.

 The reason I used google sites for my classes instead of the institutional web hosting portals is that it allows me to be in charge of my content so that I can own it and keep the materials even after I finished the semester. I was able to easily copy the site to another google site page for the next run of the same course very easily and it allowed me to modify and improve the contents gradually. Moreover, I could seamlessly share the contents with my learners to access from anywhere and anytime.

 Google sites is easy to ease, secure, customizable and scalable. However, it is part of Google’s advertising network and it is hard to know how google uses the collected user access data from this site. On the other hand, it is a great solution for many institutions who do not have the resources for hosting their own class portals. In many cases, the availability of the institutional sites becomes an issue due to security and other logistic issues (e.g. power, poor Internet connectivity). Google sites does not have this problem. The security is really well monitored by google. I remember in one case, I was using google sites for my level 7 security course where I provided many links to hacking tools with tutorials for teaching and learning purposes on google sites. It was discovered by google and they blocked my site as those tutorials can be used by people with malicious intentions and must not be available for public. So, I changed the site access from public to private. This is indeed a great example where google did help me to be a good citizen.

 It is also quite straightforward to link google sites with other google tools like google class room (which has capabilities like Moodle where students can submit their assignments, get their grades back etc), google docs for collaborative work. In fact, David Denton (Denton, 2012) has argued about the benefit of such cloud based Software as a Service platforms for enhancing instructions. In another research ( Nevin, 2009), it was illustrated how google apps significantly improved the way students and teachers work at Adam Scott College and Vocational Institute, Peterborough, Canada.

 

 

2.3

 

References

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Denton, D. W. (2012). Enhancing instruction through constructivism, cooperative learning, and cloud computing. TechTrends, 56(4), 34-41.

 

Nevin, R. (2009). Supporting 21st century learning through Google Apps. Teacher Librarian, 37(2), 35.

 

 https://hasansf.blogspot.com/2021/02/google-sites-as-platform-for-class.html

 

 

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