Sites – Jake Miller

8+ Tools for Developing Learner Profiles

Mike Mohammad joined me in episode 28 of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast to discuss 2 questions that an educator might have. One of the topics that we discussed was learner profiles. Mike posed the question, “How can students create a profile of themselves as a learner to share with an audience beyond the classroom?”

While Mike and I did not discuss the it during the show, I want to quickly compare and contrast the terms learner profile and digital portfolio. While there are similarities (both are typically curated by the student, both showcase the students work in school and both are often done digitally) there are also some differences (typically, digital portfolios are a showcase of academic work and growth while learner profiles also often focus on the students’ capabilities, characteristics and aptitudes as a learner).

Regardless of which end result you’re looking to cultivate in your school (learner profile, digital portfolio or a blend of both), there are plenty of tools that you can leverage.

A week after the episode in which Mike and I discusssed this aired, I hosted a Twitter chat about the questions from our talk.

Here are some of the participants’ responses to the question about learner profiles:

Continue reading 8+ Tools for Developing Learner Profiles

Enhanced Sharing Settings on New Google Sites

As soon as it came out, I thought the New Google Sites made a pretty awesome Digital Portfolio tool. However, there was one important feature missing – sharing settings that allow you to choose to not make student work public. Well, it’s there now!

First up, a quick overview of this in Animated GIF form, followed by detailed information about the options.

You have a few publishing options with New Google Sites, assuming you’re on a gSuite for Education domain. Here they are:

Continue reading Enhanced Sharing Settings on New Google Sites

Padlet Embed on New Google Sites

With it’s recent addition of different wall formats, Padlet has become one of my favorite edtech tools – there’s just so many possibilities for its uses! And embedding it in a Google Site opens up so many additional possibilities! Just think of the open lines of communication, collaboration and sharing that this can open up! Got a great idea for how it could be used? Share it in the comments below – or share this post with your idea on social media. Below, an animated GIF to show you how to embed a Padlet board onto a New Google Site:

Embed Twitter Timeline in Google Sites

**Oops. As of 2/21/19, you cannot embed a “stream” of tweets with a certain hashtag. I believe it was a future at the time of this original post that has been removed. Alternatives include (but are not limited to) adding tweets manually to a Twitter moment & embedding that, adding tweets to a Wakelet wake and embedding that, use other tools (TweetDeck’s Stories, possibly HootSuite’s hootfeed tool).**

Whether you’re a teacher communicating with your class, a school communicating with your community or an educator sharing with other educators around the world, embedding Twitter in Google Sites is a good tool. It was missing from the new Google Sites initially, but now they’ve added it in.

The animated GIF below demonstrates how to do it. I’m not the first to share this process, but I wanted to create a GIF to demonstrate it. I looked at Alice Keeler’s post about it to make sure I knew the steps before I started. If you need the step-by-step (or info about the other Twitter-Google Sites embeds), check out her post.

Private Google Docs in New Google Sites

Google Sites are an awesome tool for teachers to make sites, for students to make digital portfolios, for students to create projects and more! One of the best features is the ease of embedding Google files into them. The most important thing to keep in mind when doing so, is to make sure that the Doc, Slides or whatever you’re hoping to embed has the appropriate sharing settings. If they don’t, they might not be seen by your audience. Check out in the GIF below what happens when you embed a private Google Doc onto a public Google Site.

Note: In the animation, I use an Incognito Tab to test the site. If your site is intended for the public, this is a great way to make sure it’s set right!

On Twitter, Micah Carlin-Goldberg reminded me of a great way to make sure that your docs are always “Anyone with the Link Can View” prior to putting them on your site:

I prevent the problem by adding (Shift+Z) all website items to a folder that has anyone with the link permissions. Because Drive permissions of a folder apply to the contents adding them to the folder makes them visible on the website.

Embedding Slides in “New” Google Sites

When I recommend Google Sites to people, it’s typically because it’s so easy to embed so many of the things that we regularly use. Google Slides is no exception. Here are a few notes about it, followed by a GIF animation of how to do it.

Be sure that the Google Slides file has sharing settings that will allow the appropriate people to see it on the site. If your file is private and someone goes to your site, they’ll see a blank box where the slides should be.
You can set the slides to auto-play when the site loads!
With auto-play on, you can set the slides to auto-loop and modify the amount of time that each slide plays for.
You can change the size and position of the embedded Google Slides presentation.

“New” Google Sites

With as fast as technology moves nowadays, you can’t really call the “New” Google Sites new – I mean, it’s been more than a year since the upgrade was announced. But still, you have to manually select to jump to the New Google Sites. The GIF below shows how and, like Nike says, “Just Do It” – the kinda New Google Sites is much better than the “Classic” Google Sites.