Welcome to “Ask the Tech Coach,” a podcast for Instructional Coaches and Technology Integration Specialists.
In this episode of “Ask the Tech Coach,” Jeff welcomes Kyle Horst from Kirksville Web Design on the podcast to discuss how Instructional Coaches can leverage the power of Google Sites with their teachers. Learn how you can create a dynamic website that collaborates WITH Google Classroom to create a seamless digital learning environment today!
If you would like to be a part of future podcasts and share your thoughts, please contact the podcast. We would love to have you join the show.
Question of the Week
Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that happen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section.
This week’s question is:
How can Google Sites and Instructional Coaching Websites be leveraged to support both Teachers AND Students in the classroom?
Weekly Topic
- What is Kirksville Web Design?
- Google Sites vs Microsoft SharePoint
- How to start your School District Intranet project
- Start with a single Google Drive folder
- How to check that your file permissions are correctly set up
- Why should Teachers and Coaches be taking advantage of Google Sites?
- What are the features of Google Sites that we should be using when we create websites?
- What are the hidden features of Google Sites that people may not know about?
- How have you seen Google Sites be used in Education?
- Myths about Google Sites
- Not SEO Friendly
- They look “basic”
- No Blog
- Wishlist for future Google Sites updates
- Page Level Permissions
- Blogging Support Features
- Google Spaces / Chat Integration
- Text Boxes and Insert Tables
- Template Marketplace
- Google Sites API Access
- Code Injection of HTML / Javascript into Header
- Supported Image Formats (SVG Support)
- Gadgets / Widgets / Plugins Marketplace
- More Navigational Features
About our Guest Kyle Horst
Kyle is a St. Louis, Missouri native who started KWD soon after graduating. Kyle is the lead designer of all websites and intranets but is also a top contributor product expert on Google Sites. He is an advocate and influencer for Google Sites-related content with a wide social media presence among Google Workspace customers and partners.
Kirksville Web Design was formed in 2010 in the small town of Kirksville, Missouri USA by Kyle Horst. Google Sites was released in 2008 by Google Inc. and this technology was immediately chosen as the platform for Kirksville Web Design to build sites upon due to its low cost, reliability and ease of use.
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Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome
to the TeacherCast Educational Network.
My name is Jeff Bradbury.
Thank you so much for
joining us today and making
TeacherCast your home for
professional development.
This is Ask the Tech Coach
podcast episode number 254.
Today we're going to be
talking about a subject
that I love sharing,
not only in the classroom,
but also at conferences.
Today,
we're going to be talking about
Google Sites,
talking about how you can create one,
why you should create one,
and when is a website not a website?
We have a fantastic guest on
today from halfway across the planet,
and we're going to be
talking about what you can
actually do with Google
Sites that's a little bit in the box.
but a little bit out of the box.
So stick around.
We've got a fantastic
conversation coming up today.
I want to say thank you guys
to everybody who's been
checking out the site ever
since we relaunched a few weeks ago,
the brand new TeacherCast
and the brand new AskTheTechCoach.com.
The site is blowing up.
Thank you so much.
I'm working really hard to
make sure all the content is coming up.
By the time you guys are hearing this show,
I will be getting ready to
put my studio back together.
We spent the last two weeks
destroying my house thanks
to a little bit of water damage in there.
It gave me the opportunity
to build a brand new
TeacherCast broadcasting studio.
So sit down.
Get ready.
Lots of video, lots of live streams,
lots of webinars,
lots of everything coming
up from TeacherCast.
Don't forget to hit that
like and subscribe.
And if you have other
friends that are instructional coaches,
share this with them and
let them know that the
TeacherCast Instructional
Coaches Network is out there.
You can, of course,
go over to
AskTheTechCoach.com and subscribe.
to our weekly newsletter.
We would love to have you
guys continue to be a part
of our TeacherCast family.
My guest today and I kind of
met in a weird way.
I started to put together a
website for my new
technology teaching position,
and I wanted to figure out
how to best use Google Sites.
Now,
you guys know I've done courses on
Google Sites.
I've done ISTE presentations
on Google Sites,
but I wanted to see what
non-education was looking for.
So I started to find
Facebook groups of Google Sites.
I started to find different
uses of Google Sites out in the wild.
And I came across a website
called Kirksville Web Design.
Now,
this guy is doing amazing things using
Google Sites.
He is transforming the
platform into things that I
never thought was possible.
And he's here today to talk
all about how you can
leverage Google Sites in your classroom.
I want to bring on today Mr. Kyle Horst.
Kyle, how are you today?
Welcome to Ask the Tech Coach.
Hey, doing good.
Congratulations on your new site,
by the way.
It looked great.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I've been having fun with it.
We moved it to a brand new
platform a few weeks ago.
I mean, we're still on WordPress,
but I changed hosts.
It is super fast.
It is screaming fast.
And, you know,
the content that we're
putting out is amazing.
We're just going to be doing
a lot of great things on that.
So first of all, thank you so much.
And, and, you know,
I mentioned in the intro,
you're from halfway across
the planet from where I am right now.
Tell everybody where you are
and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, sure thing.
So I am a St.
Louis, Missouri native.
And, uh, you may, you know, notice this,
uh, you know,
from work with Kirksville
web design and that's my, my business.
Uh,
Kirksville is actually a small town in
Missouri where, uh, went to college, uh,
Truman state university is over there.
And so started this small little, you know,
Google sites building venture, uh, there,
and it just has grown, uh, since then.
So yeah,
I'm a Google sites designer developer.
and that sees me in all
certain different spheres
whether it's like in the
educational sector private
sector building intranets
for companies it's just all
over the place and so I'm
really glad to be part of
the this google product
community and all the ways
that you know kind of
filter into facebook or you
know how teachers are using
it I'm really impressed by
all the way that uh you
know google workspace for education and
all those users users are
taking advantage of it
really uh wonderful now we
mentioned halfway across
the world and people might
be scratching their heads
going wait a minute jeff
you're in connecticut st
louis is not halfway across
Yeah, sorry about that.
It's 9 o'clock in the
morning and it's almost 10 o'clock,
I think, for you.
Where are you right now?
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, I'm from St.
Louis, but I'm now in Taipei, Taiwan.
So that is where I'm talking
to you from right now in my
little cozy city apartment.
And how did you get from St.
Louis to Taiwan?
uh I mean that in itself is
an interesting story so it
relates to my bible work my
bible ministry and my
volunteer work and so that
actually is what
transplanted me from
missouri where I started uh
teaching and preaching to
the chinese community there
and then went to tai taiwan
to improve my language
skills uh so my wife and I
continue that volunteer
work here so it really had
nothing to do like business
wise it was uh
You know,
I just took my laptop from
Missouri to Taipei and
continue to do the same work that I do.
I love it.
I love the opportunity to go
out and to share the messages and,
you know,
but you still have those connections.
I have to ask here because, you know,
I've been in the website
business since forever at this point.
You know, I started doing,
I'll say in quotes,
professional websites when I was 15,
right?
Yeah.
I found you online doing
professional Google Sites
and I just smiled and I said,
how is somebody creating a
business out of Google Sites?
Like they're easy, they're this,
they're that.
But you've had the
opportunity to really dive
into this and create pieces of art.
I mean, they really are.
You've got a lot of great things going.
How and why Google Sites?
I mean,
I always been really interested in
what Google was doing as a company.
Uh,
and so I was always infatuated with
whether apps, you know,
whether it was like Google plus,
when that came out or, uh, you know,
I mean,
of course teachers have this whole,
you know,
different app dashboard of like
Google classroom and stuff and,
and they use Google sites.
So I was always, always interested in, uh,
in these applications.
uh Google of course is no
Google sites is no code uh
it's free so there was no
like threshold you know to
to stop me no obstacles so
you can just start building
sites right away like
anyone can and so that's
why I started doing you
know some like 13 14 years
ago I started building Google sites and
No one has really carved out this,
this niche.
No.
It's like you Google around,
you try to find Google sites, designers,
Google sites, developers.
It's like, you know,
one or two guys who are doing it.
Um,
it has grown actually recently interest
in it.
And just because I mean,
things like no code site
builders in general have
become more popular, whether it's,
you know, Wix or Squarespace.
or Framer, Webflow.
There's all sorts of different solutions.
So it's not like Google
Sites is out of the question.
It's in that same ballpark.
It's just perhaps more
simplified as a platform for building.
So you do have to work
within the limitations a
little bit and get creative.
But that's what I try to do,
push the boundaries as much as possible,
what can be done.
And then sometimes I hit a brick wall,
but that's just how it goes.
It's still 100% responsive.
It's still 100% uptime and reliable.
So it has a lot of benefits.
And like I said, free.
I mean, you can't be pre-hosting forever,
which is what Google Sites is.
It is, right?
It's free.
You can always add a domain to it.
We're going to get into some
of the more technical stuff
later on here.
And I'm glad you had
mentioned the words brick wall, right?
Because I do a lot of
training on Google Sites.
I also do a lot of training
on Microsoft products.
And being somebody who's
been going to different
school districts over the last many years,
helping them build their own intranets,
You know,
you've got Google Sites and then
on the other side, you've got SharePoint.
And people often ask,
are they the same thing
minus just the logo?
And no, no, they're not.
They shouldn't be ever confused.
But at the same time,
the one thing that they do
have in common is sharing.
You can create a website, in quotes,
that is just for your domain.
So it is easy to create an
intranet system.
And in fact, in my previous position,
I built our entire school
district's intranet using
the combination of sites
and Google Classroom.
And I definitely want to hit
you on a topic on that one later on.
But should school districts,
should businesses be
thinking about Google Sites
as a viable intranet option?
And why do you think that?
Hmm.
I mean,
it kind of depends on where you're
invested, whether it is, you know,
a Microsoft shop or, you know,
a Google shop.
Are you running Google
Workspace for business,
Google Workspace for
education within your, you know,
whether it's a school
district or whether it's an
organization or a company.
So, I mean,
I'm not going to tell you to like,
you know,
switch over completely.
If everybody's running the
email on Outlook,
you don't have to jump over
to Google Sites.
SharePoint is the internet
solution for Microsoft.
Google Sites is the internet
solution for Google Workspace.
Do you wish that Google
Sites was more SharePoint,
or do you think that that's
an advantage that Google
has because it is a basic thing,
whereas SharePoint, I've always...
trained it as sharepoint is
a massive hard drive
database system that
happens to have a website
that happens to have you
know everything is kind of
built around that
sharepoint is a sharepoint
is the nucleus that
everything kind of goes
around where google sites
is one of many applications
google happens to create
right right I mean I would
say from my point of view
sharepoint seems more
specialized as an internet
and more proficient
uh for Enterprise um I think
there's a lot more tools
and integrations maybe
available and sort of the
CRM uh or CMS that's based
with SharePoint whereas
Google Sites uh is more of
a general site builder it
can be used both for for
internets and just for
public websites and
business small business
websites so you know it's
it's that kind of more
specified use versus a more
generalized use that you
see with sites versus SharePoint.
I'm curious on your
philosophy when building
internal websites,
specifically around the file structure.
Again,
maybe we can compare it to
SharePoint a little bit
where everything is in a
team or everything is in a
SharePoint website.
I find often when I'm
working with school districts,
I have to undo a lot of
what they've created
because a lot of stuff is in my drive.
And so then you have an
intranet based off of
everybody's files that they
individually own.
That never seems to come out
right on the other end when
somebody decides to leave.
Now you've got this
organizational structure
that's built off of I own the file.
What advice do you have or
what theories and
philosophies do you have if
you were going to sit down
and build an intranet for somebody?
Where do you suggest keeping the files?
Do you have a naming
structure that you suggest?
Where do you start when
you're putting something
like this together for a
school district or a company?
I would start with a Google
Drive shared drive.
So what that does is it
takes the question of who
is the owner of a document
out of the picture.
Essentially, in a shared drive,
everyone is the owner.
There's no specific individual.
It becomes like a company
drive at that point.
So at any time of starting
an intranet build out, I say,
make a shared drive.
And this is where we're
going to put all our intranet documents.
And this is our document
management system for this site.
Google Sites is actually
integrated within Google Drive.
So Google Sites is there.
You can actually add your
site right into the shared drive.
And then along with every
folder and all the
documentation can live there.
So that's the recommended way.
Of course,
it can be a little bit more
hairy when you have people
have their docs and their
My Drive and they're the
owners and maybe they're
not going to move it there voluntarily.
So it can get a little messy, but I mean,
Overall, ideally,
you'd like that all to be a shared drive.
And then from inside of there,
it's a matter of having permissions,
right?
These files can be seen inside only.
These files might be able to
see outside only.
How do you set up Google
Admin so that way
everything is where it
needs to be and you don't
accidentally have those?
I mean, let's be honest.
We've all had the
embarrassment of it looks great to you,
but then somebody can't see
the Google Doc that you've
put on it because you don't
think about those permissions.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, at a baseline,
I want that shared drive to
be domain only.
So, you know, so it's not, I mean,
it's for an internal site.
It's not supposed to be,
unless you're building like
a vendor portal or an extranet, you know,
where people outside, you know,
consultants maybe are
viewing documents that I can understand.
But if you're building an intranet,
you're going to want that
to be secured to domain
only at the shared drive level.
And then at the folder level, you know,
you have this,
micromanagement of
permissions and
accessibility so you can
determine okay this is
going to be you know for
management or
administrators this is going
to be for it this is for hr
and you can delineate that
as much as you need to but
I think because google
sharing and permissions is
really intuitive and you
can also use contact groups
leverage those along with
it so people are coming in
and out of a contact group
uh you know it'll
modify the permissions there accordingly.
I'm glad you mentioned that
because that's exactly how
we set things up in my
previous district is
everything was district all
or district building all
and just making sure that
those file groups,
you're not doing a folder
with 150 individual teachers,
you're doing it at the group level,
right?
let's bring that down a
little bit there are a lot
of instructional coaches
listening to this who have
created google sites and
I've often found myself
saying it is really easy to
make a google site look
horrendously horrible
So you know what I'm talking about, good.
There's pitfalls, right?
I mean,
it's easy to create a site where
every row has a different background,
right?
And we all know that Google
Sites has a number of stock backgrounds.
But you've come up with some
ways to really make your sites look nice.
I mean,
even when I'm looking at your homepage,
kirksvillewebdesign.com,
you have it listed in rows.
Some of the rows are white.
Some of the rows are like a
little off gray.
But you definitely see a delineation.
You've got some great pictures in here.
What is your philosophy when
building sites?
out I'll call it let's just
start with the words
landing pages but when
you're building out those
main pages of a website
what do you think and as
you go down many coaches
are building for themselves
I kind of try to steer them
for you're not building for
yourself you're building
for others so make it look
easy make the navigation
easy but when you have a
blank canvas where do you
start oh boy um I mean you can get
a lot of inspiration I think
around the web just as like
a starting point find out
what style of site that you
want to build um so first I
like to get inspired by
something um maybe it's in
the same industry I'm in or
maybe it's just general you
know graphic designers uh
or web designers and their
you know uh their
creativity whether it's
through like something like dribble
or there's lots of designer
hubs that you can explore.
So I think that's one avenue to check out.
And then it comes down to
basic user interface
standards for web design.
Take, for instance,
you can make a text block
in Google Sites.
And that text block can be
the whole width of the grid,
can be the whole width of
that text block.
However,
have you thought about when people
read that, you know,
they have to read across
the entire line and
actually their eyes get strained,
you know,
trying to go that far and then
having come back to the
next line and come over
here and start a new line of text.
So actually,
you want to bring that text in to be a
know a shorter dimension
width wise just to help
with like legibility and
readability so actually
like a lot of this is has
to do with you know spacing
and and just like general
best use or best uh I'm
trying to say web design
standards uh to consider so
I mean not everyone has an
eye for it and you know I
understand that but uh try
to be consistent you know
it's one one thing
As far as like colors and
fonts are concerned,
simplicity and consistency
can speak a lot for making
any site or a professional site.
I remember when sites first came out,
it was 10 years ago when I
first took on my first
instructional coaching
position and I was rah, rah, rah.
And my superintendent
decided to go all in.
And so, yes,
we were building out a website
for ourselves,
but somehow the district
got the idea that every
department needed their own
individual Google site.
And so I then was building
out a template to then copy
that template for the math department,
for the HR department, for the unit.
Every single one had their own.
And then it became difficult
because each of those staff
members wanted to make
their departments unique.
You see where I'm going with this.
Suddenly,
our district online presence had
4,000 different styles of
websites that all had to
interlock with each other.
And that's difficult because...
The navigation is the key.
It's the tree in the woods, right?
If you can't find the website,
it doesn't exist.
And with a Google site,
you do have a search button,
but the search button only
searches within that particular site.
So we ended up, you know,
and I couldn't stop the
train once the decision was made.
But you had all of these
different sites that just
didn't talk to each other.
one of the questions that
has come out is how big can
a google site be have you
had an opportunity to to
think about that one or
have you had an opportunity
to kind of play with you
know massive google sites
in other words could I
really make a school
district site on a google
page that has a hundred
sites I mean how big have
you seen these things go
and is it a matter of ages or file size
well I mean Google sites
won't take up any of your
storage or a file space
within Drive so there's no
limit from that point of
view and you know your file
won't have a you know set
amount of megabytes or
gigabytes that it's that's
using uh so that's not a
concern uh I I cannot
remember if there's an
actual page limit on new Google sites
I can say back in the day
when I built actually a
behemoth intranet for Teach for America.
And that was like 500 pages.
Wow.
And that was the biggest
project I think I've ever
took on or built.
And so
I'm not sure if I ever converted, you know,
to classic Google Sites was like,
you know,
Google Sites 1.0 and now Google
Sites 2.0.
I'm not sure if it converted
or not or what happened with that.
But I mean, personally,
I haven't hit a limit with
one individual Google site
and a number of pages or, you know,
characters or something like that.
So that was 500 pages on Google Sites 1.0.
And they do have,
or classic sites right now is dead,
but they did have that
point in time where there
was the conversion process happening,
and it wasn't pretty.
It was like,
here's kind of what this looks like,
but all of your
contraptions and all of
your widgets and stuff like that, yeah,
they're not working anymore.
That upset a lot of people.
One of the other things that
I was facing when this
thing first came out 10
plus years ago was there was no themes.
There was five,
but people wanted the customizer.
And even today,
I don't think a lot of
teachers and coaches know
that you can now create your own theme.
You can now customize your theme.
You can even open up a
second Google site and you
can grab the theme from the first one.
which is wonderful.
Unfortunately,
I think that opens up even more that,
okay,
now it really is easier to create
something that looks
horrible because now you've
got unlimited fonts, unlimited colors,
and you've got unlimited everything.
And now you've got, you know,
three different panels full
of six different colors each.
I mean,
even just putting this stuff
together for my school for this year,
it's a nightmare trying to
try to match up fonts and
stuff where are you with
all the theme stuff do you
try to keep things stock do
you have a you know in your
bag of tricks do you have a
theme that you like to just
take and build from if
somebody wants you to work
with them any thoughts and
tricks of creating your own
school or building theme I mean I if you
are keen on graphic design
at all or web design in
general I mean you want to
work within the school's uh
design guidelines or
branding guidelines of some
sort that's that's where I
look to first you know as
far as logos colors are
concerned uh fonts
typography is concerned you
know I want to use all that
information because that's
already kind of set in in
stone you know it's already an approved
brand that you want to build
the site into.
So if you can make your theme,
your custom Google sites
theme match as close as
possible to those guidelines, I mean,
that would be, that would be great.
And that kind of brings it
into the same family, you know,
of websites because you
have a public website, obviously,
you know, for any school.
So can you kind of work within those,
those guidelines and those
boundaries to create a,
google site and usually you
can I mean there's I think
google fonts you know you
have hundreds of fonts to
choose from and maybe if
you can't get that exact
sans serif font you know
that was noted in the great
guidelines you can find
something that's like
almost identical so you
know I'm looking through
your site here and you've
got different designs for a number of
enterprises here, right?
You've got education,
you've got business templates.
The one that totally caught
my eye when I was looking
at this a few weeks ago was
you've got one that's kind
of notion themed and how
it's all done with the
bullet points and stuff
like that and the little icons on top.
And so what have you seen?
I mean,
I know a lot of teachers and
coaches are using sites
outside of the box.
As an example,
we're going to be using
Google Sites in a few weeks
in my class to create
posters for our upcoming
musical and our upcoming
band concerts where I'm just saying,
here's a website,
pretend you're making the poster,
use a Google form as like
an email sign up,
use a Google slide to put video on top.
Think outside the box.
How have you seen Google
Sites being used maybe for
something other than a
traditional looking website?
there are lots of of
templates actually nowadays
that you can grab for free
um and utilize so that's
actually one of the largest
queries related to google
sites is google sites
templates yeah and so you
get like we got 6 000 plus
queries a month you know on
that it's probably more but
it's roughly that so you I
mean I I'm designing
templates you got lots of
people designing free templates
All you need to do is to
copy one of those.
You copy it once,
and then you can use that
either as a copy or you can
import that theme into your
existing Google site if you
don't want to have to
migrate the content or
rebuild it or something.
So I think there's a lot of
freedom there just from all
the work that's being done
by Google Sites designers.
And you've got a lot of
stuff on your site here.
I mean, I see a lot of...
professionals using these sites where it's,
you know, it's a simple one page site,
but it's got your picture
up on top and then it's got
all your social links.
And there's companies that
are out there charging, you know,
10 bucks a month just for
these kinds of simple services.
And I know why not just make
that in Google sites?
You don't have to have a header.
You don't have to have a footer.
You can just make a simple site.
put a domain name on it,
or just link directly to it.
And I mean, you've got a template here,
free link in bio website.
It's simple, it's easy,
and it looks professional
as anything else.
And did I mention it's free, right?
I don't think people are
taking advantage of the
fact that you can do
everything with this.
For the longest time,
up until this version of TeacherCast,
all of my presentations
were built off of sites.
I had one site with, I think right now,
it's up to like 60 or 70
presentations inside of it.
But they're all hidden pages.
So in other words,
there's no navigation up on top.
And for each of those signups,
I actually put my
ConvertKit signup sheet on a Google page.
So all of my landing pages
have been done through Google Sites.
But again,
you wouldn't know it because of
the way that it was designed.
Oh, that's cool.
One of the things that I
wanted to ask you about are
some of the myths, maybe,
that I've heard over the years.
And I come from the
education part of this.
There's a few myths that
says don't use Google Sites
professionally.
They're not SEO friendly.
What do you think about that?
Well, I mean, I can't...
mince my words or I can't,
I'm not gonna lie.
I mean,
Google sites does not have all the
essay SEO tools that other, you know, uh,
web builder platforms will have.
So, uh, like WordPress, you know,
or like maybe Squarespace
or some of these other platforms,
it won't have all the tools
available to you for SEO.
So in that sense, it lacks in that area.
And I think that's just because, I mean,
it's never been like a
primary objective of Google
sites to be like,
I don't know, marketed or, or, you know,
building.
Like I said,
Google Sites has been generalized,
it's internet friendly,
it's website friendly,
it's teacher friendly.
So SEO has never been like, you know,
a primary concern or an
important concern for the
Google Sites development team.
And so it hasn't gotten a
lot of attention.
And so yeah,
if you're super concerned with being like,
I don't know,
Rank number one on a local
business page for some reason.
Yeah,
maybe Google Sites isn't the right
choice for you.
It's not to say it can't rank well.
It can,
and obviously my website ranks well
for a number of queries.
If you type in Google Sites templates,
you're right up on top.
That's how we found each other here.
There is a little bit of SEO,
but it's not WordPress, right?
Right.
If you're creating relevant, unique,
interesting,
linkable content I mean it's
going to grow organically
anyway whether it's a
google site or a wordpress
site so keep that in mind
the other one here and and
I'd love to get your thoughts on this
There's no blog post.
There's no way to have dynamic content.
And I've come up with some
ways to do this in the classroom side,
but I'm curious on the professional side,
if you are a company and
you're looking to have a
Google site built for you
or for your event or for whatever,
how do you support the idea
of having dynamic written
bloggy type content?
What do you do?
Where do you go for that?
Or can we just use more pages?
What do you do?
It's a pain point for me too.
Essentially,
I'm just creating basic pages
and I'm adding them manually.
It's not as easy as just say,
click new blog post, write article,
publish blog post.
It's there and it's
automatically managed and
archived and all that sort of stuff.
So there's not a lot of
support for blogging.
And yeah, I do find it frustrating.
Is it doable in a manual sense?
Yeah, kind of.
But it's not the strength of
Google Sites right now, at least.
I've come up with a number of solutions.
There's an application out
there called Padlet,
which is essentially like a wall.
It's like a sticky wall kind of a thing,
but you can transform this
corkboard, if you will, into a blog role.
Okay.
So it's a second,
it's a second application,
but then you can embed that blog role,
if you will, into a Google site.
Suddenly you've got dynamic conversation,
like a Google classroom
stream or something like that.
Right.
I've also seen teachers
connect their Google sites
in with blogger.
But the problem with that
then is Blogger is not
really part of the Google Apps education.
There's no controls for it.
There's no acceptable use policy for it.
So if a teacher wants to go
in that direction,
they're kind of using a
non-approved application
within the Google ecosystem
or maybe out of the Google ecosystem.
Is education using Google
Spaces within Google Chat?
You know, some yes, some no.
In my previous district,
I tried to bring spaces in
as a way for professional learning.
So here's the music
department space and here's
the administrator space.
Yeah.
You know,
people don't want to do chat
because chat's more of a
one to one thing.
Spaces is more of a group text.
But that's a culture shift, you know,
and I find if the leader is
willing to move in that direction,
then sure.
If not, it's like Twitter groups.
They exist and there's 50 people in them.
But are they really
something if there's no
chatting going on?
So I think yes.
And I think that there are
certain districts that are
making it work.
could also say the same
thing about teams right um
working with the school
district now um I'll say in
the southern part of the
united states where they
want me to help them bring
in an intranet but they
don't want to go into teams
Well, Teams is the intranet.
Teams is the SharePoint.
Just because you don't want
to chat doesn't mean that
you need to not have all
those opportunities that
Teams brings you.
Teams is kind of, again,
it's the box that holds everything.
So I think people are scared of chat.
I mean, let's face it.
We still live in a society
where email is...
what rules us all.
And we're not,
I don't think we're thinking
productive yet.
Going, you know,
the only way to be
productive in this world is
to get your nose out of your inbox.
So email is good for long-term things.
Chat is good for quick things.
I don't like emailing you saying, hey,
what are you doing for lunch?
Now that's in the middle of
a thread or something, right?
so that's a long way to
answer the question but I
think spaces are there if
depending on how ingrained
it is I mean you know if a
school district's going to
say like all second grade
teachers are in this space
and we're going to use that
space to talk about second
grade curriculum I think it
could fly that's
interesting yeah because you got sorry
Go ahead.
Yeah,
I was going to say you got these sort
of dynamic group chat sort
of applications like
Microsoft has Microsoft Teams or,
you know,
people have historically looked
at Slack as one of the great solutions.
And now Google is trying to
kind of also fill that that
gap and that vacuum within
Google workspace that
creating Google spaces.
Yeah, I think it's a cultural shift,
like you're saying,
whether they're going to adopt that.
It's hard to roll it out.
Being a long term instructional coach,
you're kind of rolling out these concepts,
these culture shifting
concepts from the bottom up.
When I did have the hot seat
and I was in the director position,
I tried to bring that stuff in, but
For many, there's so many tools,
it's easy to say, well,
that's just one more thing,
I don't have time.
And from the Google trainer point of view,
it's easy for me to say,
but this is the function of this,
and this is the function for this.
I'll give you another example.
I was working with a group
of instructional coaches for a while,
and we had a chat,
but we kept putting
long-term things in the chat.
in Microsoft Teams.
Whereas I was trying to
bring in the culture shift of, you know,
if you're going to put a website link,
you put that in the channel.
And then we can have a
conversation in the channel
about that specific thing.
But if you keep it in the chat, you know,
you'll never find it again.
Or somebody in a meeting says, oh,
I stuck it in the chat six weeks ago.
Well, who's ever going to find that?
But if you put it in a channel,
now you can have a
conversation around a theme.
those are hard things to
bring into people.
Cause then they just say, I'm confused.
I give up, forget about it.
And then it just goes back
down to send me an email and you're going,
no, we're going to slow down then.
So it's difficult.
Yeah.
I mean, I,
I find it difficult to say
there's no all in one solution.
Oh,
whether I am looking at specifically
Google workspace,
but there's nothing that
brings it all into like one
space where it's like, you know,
I kind of silo it out.
I say Google Sites is for static content.
I say if you want dynamic content,
you're looking at spaces and chat.
If you're going email,
of course there's email.
So it's like I looked at the
strengths of each of these
applications or document management.
Okay, that's Google Drive.
There's some obvious ones
that you see there,
but there's no huge all in
one consolidated master
solution that I wish maybe existed.
It'd be interesting.
Well, I've got this theory here,
and I want to hit you with this one.
They call it Office 365,
or now they call it Microsoft 365.
And the concept in my world
behind that is everything
connects to one theme.
It's all connected.
Every single day, every single minute,
it's all connected.
It's all SharePoint,
but PowerPoint is in SharePoint,
but Sites is in SharePoint,
but Copilot is all built
around the nucleus of SharePoint.
However, on the other side,
it's called Google
Applications or Google Apps, right?
Many,
many applications that just happen to
kind of have the same looking logo.
And, you know,
Think about the way that
Google Apps works.
If you were in Docs, Sheets, Slides,
and you wanted to insert an image,
you go to the Insert Image button,
and what does it do?
It opens up a dialog to find
something and drive, right?
But if you're in Google Keep
and you wanted to open up an image,
it opens up a dialog box to
search your physical hard drive.
at least the last time I checked it was.
Those things don't make sense.
So I've always looked at Google saying,
you've got a great philosophy here,
but there's no nucleus that
holds it together.
You've got four different applications,
but they all do different things.
And so even now you look at
docs on the right side,
it's got calendar and keep
and all those other things.
But then you look at a
different application and
those aren't there.
So you're trying to teach
students how to find this.
You're trying to teach
teachers how to find these
things and it's not always there.
Here's my philosophy.
And I want to get your opinion on this.
And I've been saying this one for years.
Google made a mistake in
rolling out Google Sites.
And because of it,
it has been an uphill
battle for people like us.
And when I say they made a mistake,
they came out with Google
Classroom in 2008, 2009,
somewhere in 2010, somewhere in there.
And we knew as teachers that
Google Classroom was a
place to build a course and
it had a stream,
which means you could have
a rolling conversation and
you could put all your
materials on there and your
assignments and everything
that you need was on there.
A year later,
they came out with a baseline
version of Google Sites,
and it stripped out everything.
And teachers,
and I don't know about the
corporate world, but teachers said,
I don't want that.
I'm now in Classroom.
I've been saying forever now,
Google Sites and Google
Classroom should really be
looked at as one application,
where Classroom is where
you're teaching things,
but sites is where you're keeping things.
So the way that I've
designed all my classes is
it's a put and a push, right?
I put my stuff in a website,
I push it out through Classroom.
So if I'm in a Google
Classroom this year and I'm
teaching and I archive my class,
all that stuff is gone.
if it's on my website all I
have to do is next year
just open up a brand new
classroom and all that
stuff is still there it
saves me time so I put my
stuff here but I teach over
here and really all of my
classroom archives are just
links back to the website
that I'm building
Does that make sense?
Am I making sense when I say that?
I really do believe, and again,
when I build my intranets
from my previous position,
sites and classroom,
all of the stuff for HR is
in a site or on a site.
But the superintendent's
going to message everybody
through classroom, through the stream,
through an assignment, through, you know,
do this, and now you can keep track.
And that was a really hard
thing to push through.
where you've got these two different names,
but they really need to be
looked at at the same time, the same way.
So I look at that as both as
being one application.
Am I crazy?
What do you think?
I think Google Sites could
essentially borrow and
learn a lot from Google Classroom.
I think it could also borrow
and learn from Google Chat and Spaces.
I think it could integrate a lot of things
into sites to make it better.
Uh, however, sometimes, you know,
Google sites on the back foot in terms of,
I guess,
getting those developer hours from,
from Google to make those updates.
Um,
but I think one of the problems is my
perspective, because I mean,
I've never been a teacher.
I've never been educator.
I've only been serving as
like maybe an outside consultant,
you know, to, uh,
schools or been a site
developer for schools.
So, you know,
the majority of my clients
don't even know Google
Classroom exists or that
it's able to be implemented
at a business or corporate
or private level.
So they don't even consider it, you know,
as an application.
And the sad thing is also Google Sites.
I mean,
marketing is not great and many
people don't know it exists.
And so they don't build a
Google site or they don't know, you know,
this isn't even a Google Drive app.
so it's kind of a little bit
of a sad state and things
but I mean that's what
people like me are trying
to improve and and trying
to I mean not only with
like client you know client
discussions but also you
know I participate on the
product forums I'm there
supporting and helping
people through that to find
solutions um so I mean
there's a there's a
community like you found on
on Facebook for example and so
know we're just trying to
make the best use of the
product that we can well
you had mentioned developer
hours let's kind of wrap up
here with things you wish
google sites could do I'm
sure you have a list have
you seen my list I've
published it actually that
might be where I'm going
with this okay let me see
how I can pull it up right um
Again,
this is the same thing as I wish
when somebody opens up Google Keep,
it didn't look at their hard drive.
Like small things like that.
But I mean, you know,
when we can start with,
I wish it had a blog role.
I wish it just, it worked.
I wish it all embedded.
I wish this and that.
But what's, give me your top, okay,
let's do the wrestling terms.
Give me your Mount Rushmore.
What are the four things
that you really would love
to see if Google was
listening to you right now?
Which, of course,
I'm sure that Mr. Google is
listening to this podcast.
What are the top few things
that you really wish Google
Sites would have?
Yeah, I mean, that's how I've prioritized.
I've made the list and I
have the top five already
lined out for you.
Lay it on me.
I have 15, which was the total,
but I'll give you what the top five are.
So the first one is page level permissions,
which used to be a part of classic sites,
did not make it into new sites,
and has frustrated many a
user and site content owner.
So page level permissions,
another pain point there.
Actually,
number two was what we discussed there,
blogging support features.
and post-publishing and that
sort of content management system.
Three was Google Spaces and
chat integration.
Can we bring that into sites, please?
That would be beautiful.
Four was text boxes and insert tables.
So it's more like design
capabilities with the text boxes because,
you know, how many times can I...
these are not difficult
things right yeah and not
even on this on this blog
post I made about it I have
as an example you know
exactly what squarespace is
doing and you know how they
have figured that solution
out like can we come up
with you know this thing
for google sites and roll
it out please that'd be
nice uh I know number five
on my on my top five here
was a template marketplace
so that you know more people
are exposed to the
templates that are being
designed and marketed and
and you know those
designers are doing a great
job whether I mean it's an
education you got people
making templates you know
teacher teacher sites and
student sites and
portfolios all sorts of
stuff in education sector I
mean I wish those got uh
more exposure keep going
give me your top 10.
Just everything that you're saying,
I'm just nodding my head here.
And I've got one that you
might not have on the list.
Let's go down your list to
see if my one thing,
because I'm about to start
a major project this week.
And I'm hoping that you can
talk me out of it.
So that was the top five.
Give me the top ten here.
All right.
Six.
We got Google Sites API access.
I'm not like...
a great developer but I know
people that are and they
would do fantastic things
if they just had the tools
to do so so api access was
one thing next uh code
injection of html and css
javascript into the the
header of the site so into
the site globally uh if you
could insert code anywhere
right now you only can work
within set dimensional widgets you know
uh so that's one thing and
next is supported image
formats if you're using uh
svg which is you know a
vector format you know you're out of luck
uh next is gadgets widgets
plugins directory
marketplace this is
actually a google classic
thing as well you had a
bunch there's like a
directory of all sorts of
gadgets and widgets that
people had made and
published you know whether
it was like weather or just
like a stopwatch timer you
know just various things uh
so now that doesn't exist
anymore um what am I on
though what number am I at
You're doing great, though.
Everything you're saying, I'm going, okay.
Number 10 was more navigational features,
controls, hover effects.
So right now you just have top nav,
side nav, that's it.
And, you know, some little customization.
Right.
You have a nice-looking side nav,
but then the logo is so
small and ugly-looking.
Can we please make that
square bigger or something, right?
Yeah, just more...
We want to tweak it a bit,
like you're saying.
Right.
Every time I start a project,
I take a deep breath and I
just say to myself, it's not WordPress.
It's not WordPress.
I'll give you one here.
Look,
the reason why we're talking today is
because I love doing Google
Sites projects with my kids.
And I'm about to unleash
student portfolios
using Google Sites.
And I've had conversations
with many educators.
I've had many conversations
even in our Facebook group
there of how do you do this?
And if we go back to Google Classroom,
right,
I create a doc and then I
assign that doc to you and
then it does the make a copy.
Everybody makes a copy.
And if you do that process,
the teacher has access to
the doc 100% of the time and controls it.
But that feature does not exist for sites.
And so I need to find a way to do this,
but right now I've created
a template that I want to
give out to my kids and
it's got a page for every
project that we're doing.
And essentially the way my
class works is we're gonna
do an assignment and then
they're gonna put it on the website.
Do an assignment, put it on the website,
right?
You get the concept here.
And many people have said,
have the students,
make the website and share it with you.
And I'm going, no,
then they're all going to look different.
Or I now have to have a
checkbox of who actually did it.
So I don't get to the end of
the year and realize that
Timmy hasn't done something
yet for the last six weeks, right?
So I have to create a
situation where I can
control this and I can see it.
And that way they can't kick me out.
Because if I create it and I
share it with everybody,
then I haven't used any classroom time.
But if I say we're going to
open up a Google site,
and here's an example,
make yours look like this,
I've just taken three weeks
of my life away.
So the only way that I know how to do this,
and I had to do this five
years ago when I taught a
course like this, was I make the template,
I go into Drive, I hit Copy,
Now you have two.
I highlight them and copy.
Now I have four.
I highlight them and copy.
And then I start again.
I put Jeff's website and
Kyle's website and Mary's website.
And I do that times 100 individually.
And then I go in and I share
it with Kyle and Jeff and Mary.
And you can see how much time this takes.
But at the end...
The only thing I have to
fear is that they're going
to get an email.
And I told them all this the other day.
You're going to get an email
probably at two in the morning that says,
Mr. Bradbury is sharing a
website with you.
Do not touch this thing
because I can't control the theme.
I can't control a box.
So essentially when I make
these templates for people,
it's just the stock box options.
So that way,
God forbid a kid comes up and says,
I accidentally deleted it.
It's literally a one click
and the template area is still in there.
Am I missing something?
There's no other way to mass
produce in a way that is safe.
Because again,
I don't want to have a
hundred and some kids
I'm not trying to create web designers.
I'm trying to give them a portfolio tool.
There's no other way to do this.
And so your answer might be,
then don't use sites.
Find a different platform, right?
But those platforms, of course,
cost money.
How would you do this?
Am I on the right track for this?
How would you create a
scenario where if you
wanted to give this
template or this site out to 100 kids...
Yeah,
this exact scenario cropped up on the
product forums.
Maybe it was you that posted it.
I don't even know.
Probably.
But yeah,
and the solution was what you're
currently doing is the solution,
the best solution we could make.
Because when you make the
sites or make the copies of the sites,
you by default are the
owner of that site.
And the student can't go and
remove you as the owner.
So you have that security knowing,
you know,
I always have access to this site,
to the student site.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So otherwise you're putting
too much control and
freedom in and sort of, you know,
some question as to whether
the student's going to
follow up on sharing it to
you or putting it in the
folder or whatever.
It's hard enough to get the
kids to do the assignments
I'm giving them through Classroom,
but at least I can look and say, hey, mom,
hey, administrator, the kid didn't do it.
But to have the situation
where maybe the kid was working,
but they didn't share it
with you or they didn't
share it with you the right way or,
you know,
it's going to take me a lot of
time to do this.
I don't want to do it.
But at the same time,
I want them to have
something where they're –
we're going to do a project
where we're making a logo.
Great.
The logo goes on the website.
They're going to make a banner.
The banner goes on the website.
We're building out this
little monster throughout
the semester here.
And I love doing this.
I just hate this part of the process.
You don't like the 100 copies process?
No.
I understand that.
I'm sorry.
I can't help you anymore.
I know for the last 12 years
we've been crying for
page-level permissions,
but the teacher in me is saying,
I'll take Google Classroom
integration any day.
Please let us know.
So Kyle,
when you talk to your Google friends,
please push that one up there.
Kyle, look,
clearly we're nerding out about
all this stuff.
But if you're out there
still listening to this show,
we would love to hear from you guys.
Please feel free to reach out.
Kyle,
where can we hear more about the
great things that you're
doing over at Kirksville Web Design?
My website is kirksvillewebdesign.com.
So I would follow that.
I mean,
from there you can find anything
else social media wise.
Nice.
And of course,
you can find us over at teachercast.net.
All of our instructional
coaching stuff is over at
askthetechcoach.com.
We are going to be creating
a ton of content.
We're going to be doing some
Google Sites tutorials and
making sure that you guys
have all that you need for
your coaching program.
And that wraps up episode
number 254 of Ask the Tech Coach.
On behalf of Kyle and
everybody here on the
TeacherCast Educational Network,
my name is Jeff Bradbury,
reminding you guys to keep
up the great work in your
classrooms and continue
sharing your passions.
Reminding you guys to keep
up one edit point.
Reminding you guys to keep
up the great work in your
classrooms and continue
sharing your passions with your students.