Google Sites makes it possible for you to strengthen lines of communication with students and parents.Google Sites are incredibly easy to create and personalize.  Like Docs, Forms, Sheets, and Slides, Google Sites are created from your Google Drive. 

Get a quick overview of how to navigate within the Google Sites editing interface. 

This video will show you how to:

• Title your site file (how the file is named in Drive)

• Add a site name (the site name that displays for visitors)

• Add a page title

Tip: At any time if you would like to preview what your published site will look like to viewers, click the Computer with table icon to the left of the Publish button.

Before adding text and content to your site, a good place to start is choosing a Theme for your site. Using the Themes tab in Google Sites, you can change the look and style of your site at any time. The reason I suggest doing this first, is to establish default colors and font styles that will apply across your site as you add text and pages.  If you are big into design, you can create your own custom site theme. With custom themes, you can create and apply different backgrounds and text colors throughout your site, set default text styles, add brand images or favicons, and customize other site properties.  Learn more.

 Learn how to adjust  a page's banner. You can modify the title text, the banner size, and change the background image. 

Learn the basics of inserting and moving text boxes as well as how to adjust the font type, size and color.

 Learn how to create and title additional pages on your site as well as how to adjust the order of pages you create. 

You'll learn how to add images, resize them, move them, add captions, and align them with text on your site as well as how to insert automatic picture slideshows in your Site.

Learn how to insert files from your Google Drive. More importantly, you'll learn how to ensure those files will be visible to those visiting your site. 

See how to insert and arrange videos from YouTube as well as a few other tips. 

Sometimes you may want to embed content that is not from YouTube or your Drive. This video will show you how to insert other content into your site. 

Within Google Sites, you have the option to create unique layouts for your pages. Quickly organize the content on your page with predefined section layouts.These pages can each have a custom look and feel, helping you visually organize and display information to your site’s visitors. 

Dividers and Spacers are two design features that provide more flexibility, especially when designing a site with a vertical layout. A divider can be used to offer visual separation between sections of your website. Spacers allow you to adjust the spacing between content in Sites. They can also be used to add empty space to your Sites in specific places. 

Learn how to publish your Google Site for the first time. Each time you make a change to your site, if you want it to post, make sure to press the Publish button. 

Note: This tutorial is made using a personal Google Account. If using a school Google Account you get a slightly different look. Follow the tutorial steps, but once you click on "Manage", in the "General acces section" next to "Published site" use the drop down to change your school to "Public", and click "Done" .

See how to find the link to your live site that you can share with students and parents. 

If you are using sites to post information for viewers, then your main considerations should be ease of navigation.  To assist with this, organization is key. In this video you will learn how to create new sub pages or make an existing page a sub page.  Sub pages are vital for organizing content  and make it easy for viewers to navigate your site. 

Learn how to rename pages, delete pages, duplicate pages and hide them from the navigation menu. As a bonus you will learn how to set up a template page utilizing the Dide and Duplicate options to save you time in the future when adding course content. 

In this video you'll learn how to set the location and color of a site's navigation bar or menu. 

Announcement banners let you highlight important information for site viewers in a clear and customizable way. Your website footer is a helpful section at the bottom of the page where you can add standard content that will appear at the bottom of every page on your site. For teachers, this can be a good place to add school or contact information. 

You can link text (also known as hyperlinks) and objects on your site to content across the web.  As a bonus in this video, you will learn about a cool Google Docs link hack!

You can also link text and objects to pages on your own web site to further assist site visitors in navigating your site.  You'll also learn how to create buttons. 

Learn how to create a calendar of events for your class with Google Calendar and then how to automatically display those events on your site. 

Learn how to emded a Google Form directly onto a page in your site so that it can be filled out by site viewers. You'll also learn a couple of other tips for using Google Forms as a Contact Me form. 

Instead of embedding individual files one at a time into your site, you can embed a resource folder so that students can access a set of files you choose. If you decide to insert shared folders in your site you won't have to worry about constantly updating your site with resources. Just add them to the shared folder and they will  instantly be available for students to access from your site. 

Creating playlists in YouTube is an excellent way to curate a set of helpful videos for students. As an alternative to inserting multiple videos on a page, you can embed a playlist instead. Besides saving space on your page, this saves you time constructing your site. As you add to and update your playlist, that content will automatically be reflected on your site without further adjustment.  During the video you'll see not only how to embed a playlist, but how to create a playlist, add to it, and get the link to embed as well as a few other handy YouTube search tips. 

Please note the following:

• To create a playlist, you must have your Youtube Channel set up. Learn how to here. 

• You can't add videos to the playlist if they are labeled as "Made for kids."

Using Google Drawings, you can create custom page header images for your site.  This video will show you how to do this.  

Google Sites Page Header Template