Internet Communications Unit (3 weeks)

This multi-week unit focuses on how to improve the way we communicate with parents and students. For 90% of you, this means creating a class website using Google Sites as the main assignment, along with participating in various discussions and viewing the presentations. However, if creating a website is easy for you and you have done it before, then please email me about an alternate assignment, such as using a different kind of tool (blog, wiki, weebly, social network, etc.) to create a website instead.

But as I said, most of you will want to create a website using Google Sites as this is one of the most popular assignments of the course! In our day and age, every teacher should have a website, as students are increasingly looking to access course content online. In this unit you will create your own website that will

serve as a place to turn in assignments throughout our course,
become a professional portfolio for when you go out looking for employment and
give you an initial beginning of a future website you can use as a teacher. You will learn the skills so you can edit your website at that point with the correct content for the courses you teach.

To complete this unit:

1. View the presentation on the next step (notice the forward button below)

2. View the assignment page that follows and begin working on your Google Site at http://sites.google.com. Post questions if you have any about the assignment.

3. View the presentations and participate in the discussions for Weeks 2, 3 and 4.

4. When you complete your website, upload your website URL to the Internet Communications Project assignment page in the "Week 4" module.

5. You're done! Be sure to check any feedback I give you inside of Canvas, which will be attached to your submission and viewable only by you and me. Now, let's get started!

Creating a Google Account

Most people in this class will choose to do projects that will require a Google Account. Why do we use Google so much? No, I don't own any Google stock (I wish!). I also don't even think Google is always the best choice for every one of these tools that we will use. For example, I think Zoho probably makes a better online word processor, and Wordpress is a better online website creator. However, Google is simply the best, hands down, at doing everything with one login and password. That makes it really easy and nice for you as a teacher to use it with your students. Plus, Google is free. Schools have picked up on this and are choosing to use Google over other options to save millions of dollars.

So we'll use Google too! If you already have a Google Account, you can skip the videos and the following explanation that explain how to set up a Google Account.

Those of you who have a Gmail account already have a Google account as Gmail is one of the services provided to Google account users. If you don’t have a Gmail account but have used Google Docs before then it’s likely you already have a Google account. Simply sign-in with the username and password you use to view Google Docs.

For those of you who do not have a Google account or want to create a new one, there are two ways to create a Google account. You can create a new email address using Google’s email service, Gmail (recommended) or you can use an existing email address (such as yahoo or hotmail) to create a Google account. Both methods are quick and easy to do but if you need help there are videos below that will walk your though how to do this.

How to Create a Google Account Using Gmail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At4-vES-Prs

Creating a Google Account Using an Existing Email Account from Another Email Service

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLv-FMEwCLI

Google Tutorials

Google has many useful tools, and I hope you will explore them! Many we will use in this class. Google has very excellent help pages you can access here to learn about Google tools. We also have many tutorials we have created for you that you can access on the Badges website.