TCEA 16 - Google Sites

If you district is a GAfE district and doesn't have a classroom website system in place, give Google Sites a try. It is very easy to get started with a hub for your classroom communication.

At TCEA I was fortunate to sit in on Christy Fennewald's session on Advanced Google Sites. You can find Christy a Fennovation.org, on her blog at http://digitalliteracy20.blogspot.com/, and on Twitter @christyfenne. If you are into Google she is one to follow. Her information is great and straight forward for all to understand.

From her session, she shared two of her presentation about sites.

• Set your Sites on Sites - Beginner
  
• Set your Sites on Sites - Advanced 
  

Here is her recent blog post about her TCEA presentation.

During her advanced session, she offered many great tips to make your site better. Here are a few that I was able to jot down.

1. No more than 5 links across the top.
   
2. Don't do drop down menus because that is harder to access on a mobile device.
   
3. Make an image map using Google Drawings.
   
4. It is usually better to make your site from scratch, but admins could make a template for their teachers to use.
   
5. 1200 px is a pretty good width.
   
6. If there is a blue button, click it.
   
7. SiteMaestro is an essential, advanced add-on for Google Sheets that allows you to bulk-copy, share, and manage Google Sites with rosters of students. If you are looking to do student portfolios through Google Sites, this is the add-on you need. 

And if you are wondering how she made the cute, little, animated avatar, check out Androidify.

Pick the perfect color scheme

I will be the first one to admit that I am not the most artistic person. Never have been. In elementary school one time we had to color an Easter bunny coloring sheet (as a teacher I now those are keep busy keep quiet sheets). Mine was brown, scribbled, outside the lines... just a mess. The nicest thing my teacher said about it is that my bunny looked fuzzy. Definitely tried to make me feel better about my lack of talent.

These days when I have to put together a presentation, web page, logo, flyer... I use a couple of tools to help me with colors. I also recommend this to my online HS Web design class.

Color Schemer -  http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
select your color and a selection of colors come up that look good with your original selection.
This also gives you the RGB and HEX codes for your color.


Color Scheme Designer - http://colorschemedesigner.com/
You can set just mono color, complement, triad... more stuff I don't totally know all about. You can also check for color blindness and get the RGB and CSS codes for your HTML. You can also see your color scheme against a light page example and a dark page example.



No more excuses for bad color combinations.