New Google Sites – Jake Miller

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:

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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.

“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.