Google Sites. Really Interesting Stuff

My job is to think about how technology impacts teaching and learning and then actually do something about it.  I have to manage people, teams, and keep track of all of the details associated with the 50 or so projects currently going on.  Trust me, I'm not complaining, I really enjoy doing what I do but keeping track of the amount of information is brutal.  Its gotten worse in the last couple of years for one simple reason -- we are all producing tons of content in so many different locations.

Right now if I want to know everything about a single project I may have to log into our BaseCamp project management software, check the members of the team's individual blogs, sift through google docs, spreadsheets, review the project briefing presentation, watch for Twitter traffic, check the project wiki, and search for relevant emails.  It has really gotten out of hand.  There is a great reason we use so many different tools and it is because they all do certain things really well -- but that doesn't change the complexity of gathering information together.

In my parent organization we are looking at Sharepoint, but it nearly kills me to think we have to go from the agility of the tools I mentioned above to an old-school document centric model predicated on storing physical (digital) versions of documents in a file system.  To edit them you have to check them out and re upload ... in every single way it is counter to my overall workflow and philosophy.  I only use Office when I absolutely have to and nearly every single document I receive gets instantly uploaded and converted to a Google Doc of one flavor or another.  Dealing with version control is worse than looking in multiple places to get at information.

I've been looking closely at the Google Apps for Edu suite and have become very impressed with Google Sites.  It is a drop dead simple cloud based environment that can be used for all sorts of things.  We've toyed with it for project management sites and haven't yet jumped, but with the release of new pre-built templates Google is going right after Microsoft's jugular.  I've never seen an environment more easy to setup and deploy to manage all sorts of information.  What I really like about the template idea is not that they are pre-built, it is that they give you a killer model to use to envision how you would go about using Sites.  I think that is the smartest thing they've done ... prior to this upgrade you had to really think about architecture and envision how you'd insert all the relevant content.  Not anymore ... this morning I built a new site and the first thing it asked me to do was choose a template set.

 

Choosing the project wiki template instantly built a site that invited me to click to substitute my own content for their placeholder materials.  I can not only link documents into it, I can actually insert the full content of docs, spreadsheet, forms, presentations, and google gadgets into the site.  I'm going to kick the tires and see what happens, but if it is this easy to wrangle large amounts of content for complex projects imagine how easy it will be to manage the same kinds of things for individual courses.  Lots to discover and investigate.

Comments

[Christian Johansen]

In the last century, web sites were built by hand, and it was painful. CMSs took the pain away, relatively speaking, but now we're feeling it again. Like broadband, speed and ease of use spoils us. Google sites and similar services will be a CMS killer to handle quick, one-off sites and project document repositories.

And you gotta love logging in using OpenID.

[Cole Camplese]

Christian, I think you are hitting on it -- speed and ease of use may trump power and massive flexibility. I was stunned with how easy and connected the google sites template was. It was easy to integrate any and all of my google docs with a few clicks. That means a big part of the CMS is actually sitting in a really familiar look word processing UI. If my content flows from a google spreadsheet into the website without effort updating either the page or the data source becomes easy and transparent. I feel like we really need to investigate what is happening in this environment for the small one off site.

And yes, open ID is a nice change!

[Mpondu]

Hi Cole,

With you all the way on frustrations with multiple locations and versionitis - hate to see direction move towards Sharepoint. Not sure if you have read this article: http://bit.ly/1ZXqxP

I have been using Google Sites since spring and was initially taken aback with its bleak-looking templates and quirky interface. Improvements were encouraging during the summer, enough for me to work on some class projects and explore GS as an e-portfolio tool, although journaling and commenting are limited.

Did not know about the new templates until I read your post and will be asking our site admin to enable them tomorrow. Looking forward to your feedback on the Wiki template!

Joe Fahs

[Cole Camplese]

Hi Joe. I did see that article. It would be quite an interesting world if enterprises actually could move away from Office in a year. It would really change the way people think about documents and versioning. The idea of sharing instead of single authorship is a powerful change -- from managing an enterprise to teaching and learning.

[SharePoint Sceptic]

In terms of flexibility and ease, I think the workspace publishing tools of HyperOffice are more flexible and easy to use than Google Sites. Purely free form drag and drop publishing of pages. Check out their blog entry about it:- http://blog.hyperoffice.com/2009/10/19/collaboration-software-upgrades-009/

[Cole Camplese]

I'll take a look at that and see how they stack up. That post has some great info in it ... thanks for sharing it.