Building a Website

David Mulder | December 2008

If you are the teacher who is tech-savvy enough to logon to a blog such as the one you are reading now, it's time that you have a website of your own. A classroom website is an excellent place to keep students and their parents aware of class activities, inform them of upcoming events, remind them of class policies, and—my favorite—share pictures of school happenings. The good news: it is getting easier and easier to create your own "Home on the 'Net", and you don't even need to learn any arcane computer programming languages to do so.

For the past seven years or so (up to the 2007-2008 school year), I used an HTML editor (HTML is the computer language used to write webpages) to compose and update a classroom website. (Microsoft Frontpage and Mozilla SeaMonkey are commonly used HTML editors.) While my website changed in style and content over the years, I finally settled on the current version of this website: simple and basic (mostly just black text on a white background with few graphics; you can view it here if interested), but containing the information I needed to give to interested students and parents. During the 2007-2008 school year, I added a "photos" page for the first time, with many positive comments from parents about being able to see their students in action. Composing webpages this way is quite easy to do using an HTML editor—as easy as typing with a word processor (such as Microsoft Word).

The problem with using an HTML editor is that you still have to publish your webpage, the step that allows other people to actually view your site on the web. While there are several different ways to publish a webpage, there really is no super-easy way to do so using an HTML editor, especially if you want to add a lot of pictures. Driven by my desire to make adding pictures to my website easier, I began searching for a tool to make the process of publishing a website easier. During the summer of 2008, I was delighted to discover a more straightforward tool to use for both composing and publishing my classroom website: Google Sites.

Google Sites is a webpage development tool offered, of course, by Google, the people who revolutionized web searching and developed or bought out just about every other Web innovation of the past few years. The tools available with Google Sites make it almost ridiculously easy to set up a webpage, and you can do it in just minutes. You don't have to know anything about HTML, and you don't have to download a special program to use Google Sites. You simply have to open a web browser—I personally like Firefox best—and navigate to Google Sites. To use Google Sites, you'll have to set up an account with Google (which is free, and easy, and spam-free, so far). You can do this at the Google Sites page by clicking "Get Started." After setting up an account, click on "Create New Site" and then fill in the form items—site name, site description, theme (what your site looks like), etc.—to set up your site. Two minutes later, pat yourself on the back and toot your own horn—you have a website of your own!

Okay, now it's time to actually create your webpages. Again, Google Sites makes it super-easy to do so. When you create your site, you automatically create a page called "Home," which is—surprise!—your home page. But right now, it is a blank canvas, ready for you to get to work developing. Click on the "Edit page" button to type information you want on this page. The toolbar that appears at the top of the page will allow you to change fonts and font size, bold/italicize/underline, change text alignment, create links to other webpages or websites, add graphics, and more. (If you want to actually learn HTML and have even greater control over the layout and design of your page, there's even an "Edit HTML source" button.) As you compose your content, feel free to experiment and change things around. If you don't like it, you can always change it back! When you are finished editing the "Home" page, click "Save changes."

Ready to add a new page? Click the "Create New Page" button at the top of the page. A pop-up window will open asking you to type the title of the page and select the type of page you'd like to create. Google Sites allows you to choose from five different possibilities here:

  • Webpage - a basic page that can include text and graphics. (Most pages you would create for a classroom website would likely fall into this category.)
  • Dashboard - a special kind of page that allows you to easily add content from other Google applications (Google Docs for online documents and spreadsheets, PicasaWeb for your photos, YouTube for videos, etc.)
  • Announcements - a "blog-like" page allowing you to post a series of items as new things come up.
  • File Cabinet - a place to upload documents and files that you want other people to be able to access (like .pdf files, PowerPoint slideshows, etc.)
  • List - a page to keep track of work projects on which people might be collaborating. (You can set up webpages to allow several people to collaborate together on a project.)

Each of these different types of pages has its strengths, depending on how you intend to use your website.

Don't be afraid to experiment! If you decide that a page isn't really what you were hoping for, you can easily delete it by clicking on the "More actions" button and choosing "Delete." And you can further customize the look and feel of your site by clicking the "Site Settings" link in the upper right hand corner of the page; feel free to explore.

So now you don't have an excuse to not have a classroom website of your own. Google Sites allows you to design a website to suit your needs, but without the difficulties and frustrations of publishing it because they take care of this hardest step for you! As a web development tool, it is straightforward enough that anyone who can type can create a webpage of his or her own, but also flexible enough for an HTML-savvy tech-guru to customize it to his or her liking. You can view my new and improved classroom website here. Give Google Sites a try, and reply to this article with the link to your new website so we can see your masterpiece!

David Mulder teaches 7th and 8th Grade Science at Sioux Center Christian School in Sioux Center, Iowa.