Help students to organize materials for their Google Sites Portfolios in Google Folders! We recommend that you have them create (2) folders: Public Assets and Private Assets. Set Share permissions appropriately for each folder. For Public Assets set as: Anyone with the link can View. For Private Assets set as: Private. Setting Share Permissions correctly in the beginning will create efficiencies.

Decide how you will track long-term portfolio submissions, grades, work quality, and log improvement over time. Some suggestions are Google Classroom or Seesaw. For teachers to keep track of student progress create an Apple Numbers sheet or a Google Sheet.

You need to determine the need for, as well as the management of, commentary; questions; and suggestions from teachers, students, and parents as it pertains to the development of ePortfolios. A suggestion would be to create a Google Form where students, teachers and parents can provide feedback to the student.

Be attentive of one of the main purposes of an ePortfolio is to document student growth. Think about incorporating academic growth in your conversations. A suggestion would be to have students reflect on assets they are including in their ePortfolio in a Google Doc or Apples Pages file.

Students will want to showcase their learning in different ways. Make sure you have a way to convert paper resources into a digital format. Papers and projects can be scanned or photographed. Make sure whatever collection devices the students are using have the necessary apps and or software to convert digitally.

It is helpful to make a checklist with all the items that should be included in a student portfolio. Help students stay on track meeting the checklist requirements for the ePortfolio. A suggestion is creating a checklist in Google Docs, Google Sheets or Apple Numbers.

It is important to have a plan for students transferring ownership of their digital portfolio from their district account to a personal account after graduating/leaving the district.

Make sure that the site is accessible to all that are trying to access it. Google has done a great job of limiting fonts and themes so that they can be accessed by assistive technology devices and readers. In addition, it is important to tag your images with alt text (right click on image, click snowman icon, Add alt text). It is also important when adding images to be mindful of the inclusion of text. Text embedded in an image will not be read because the reader sees it as part of the image.

A significant study by Google has shown that visitors don’t like visual complexity. The gist: the more complex your design, the less it is perceived by visitors as beautiful. Teach students to have website white space. Do not overcrowd a page, or put on a bunch of animations. People who view websites prefer simple designs.

When students create a website with writing, they need to remember to be careful putting text over images. When there is a lot of text over complex images it is very difficult for the viewer to read.

Website language should be minimal and to the point. Tell students to use power words, short sentences, and try to show vs. tell information.

Google Sites has a preview button that shows how your site will look for a Large screen, a Tablet or a Phone. When students design a Site Page they need to make sure to preview the site in large screen, tablet and mobile form. Everything within a section, left to right, will stack vertically when viewed on a mobile device. Students need to stack information so it makes sense to the audience.

Once a student has right clicked to make a copy, the template is saved in the student's Google Drive. We recommend that students share their Google Site directly with the teacher, or Sites can be turned in through Google Classroom as an assignment so teachers can monitor content.

When creating a more personalized banner image for your Google Site, it is important to note that an image uploaded as your header image will NOT resize for mobile devices. Instead, consider dragging an image into the banner (this can be done by simply dragging and dropping from your desktop). You can still select a Google created background image for the background of your banner.