Google sites, multimodal learning, hangouts.

Sorry for the late post but on Friday afternoon I was a bit too brain dead to actually do this so I thought I’d just go home and try doing it using the voice to text on Google Docs, which I'm using right now. So for the DFI 3 we looked at Google sites and it's something that I think is a great tool. About 5 years ago I got really excited about Google sites and I started doing some, and I did a bit of PD on them but they were just too clunky and they didn't work very well and I pretty much gave up on them until this year when I started doing the PD with Herman and he showed me how much better they've gotten. This PD was interesting for me too because I started teaching websites for the first time this year, but using HTML and CSS code which is a really much more difficult. I know from firsthand experience how important the design and planning phase is, so it was really interesting to see some of the stuff that we did on Friday. I like the concept of using multimodal presentation to cater for a range of learning styles. 

From my point of view I think the use of Google sites is the key to digital fluency, it's a really powerful tool for teachers to be able to present their units in way that makes 21st century education possible. Just as importantly I think teachers are able to easily share resources this way. I am really glad to be part of the DTTA group, the digital technology teachers association, it is amazing to see how people are sharing resources digitally. You will find videos, slides, assessment schedules, posters and pretty much anything and everything you can imagine and you can easily put them into your own sites or use them for units plans. I find that working on sites is relatively easy and I think anyone with enough basic skills to make a Google presentation only needs to up-skill slightly to make a reasonably decent site. The other thing that I find about sites (I don't know if it's just me because I enjoy design) is that they can be quite addictive and you can get really caught up in doing all sorts of little design things and making all sorts of stuff to improve the look and functionality of your site. 

Having said that I think the key to a good site is really doing your planning beforehand and thinking about the layout and the functionality of it. Use the kiss principle and keep it simple. I'm working on the digital technology vision strategy document at the moment and I've decided that the best way to do it is to present it as a site. I’m amazed at how you can just have layers upon layers of information for different pages in the links to different sites that are really easy to navigate. I think that's the key to the sites and one of the reasons I'm not huge fan of Google Classroom is because of the way that it becomes quite hard to find things. I can see in the next few years our school will be putting a real focus on developing sites as the focal point for teacher's PD so that we can do rewindable, multimodal, 24/7 learning.  I think sites really allow for huge amounts of flexibility and like I've said before I think these are going to be the key to bringing 21st century learning with the 6 C’s to GBHS. 

Even though I'm pretty well versed in making Google sites I still managed to learn quite a few new tricks that will make my sites better in future. Well I have to say the voice to text is not too bad but I'm gonna have to go through and fix up quite a few strange little things, I'm just reading through and looking at words like applesauce which I'm pretty sure I never said anyway that's enough for now.