{"id":133,"date":"2011-11-25T10:52:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T14:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=133"},"modified":"2011-11-28T09:52:16","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T13:52:16","slug":"google-sites-page-level-permissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2011\/11\/25\/google-sites-page-level-permissions\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Sites: Page-Level Permissions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2011\/11\/lab5.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-134\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2011\/11\/lab5.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"174\" height=\"156\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Google What?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I do not often read Google&#8217;s blog about their documents features, but recently I was looking for an answer to a few questions about Google Sites, the tool that I now use for all of my course syllabi. Unlike traditional web-site builders, Google Sites is collaborative; this is common for wikis, web-site software long popular in K-12 education but rarer in higher education.<\/p>\n<p>In doing my reading at Google&#8217;s blog, I found a game-changer for writing teachers. Sites has quickly become my favorite tool for a few reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s free<\/li>\n<li>It offers a navigational sidebar that I like from <a href=\"http:\/\/pbworks.com\" target=\"_blank\">PBworks<\/a>&#8216; wiki<\/li>\n<li>It lacks obtrusive advertisements<\/li>\n<li>It has the ease of use that <a href=\"http:\/\/wikispaces.com\" target=\"_blank\">Wikispaces<\/a> offers, but appears even more familiar to MS-Office users.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To my knowledge, however, none of Google&#8217;s smaller competitors, and certainly nothing from the desktop-centric Microsoft empire, offer a creator the ability to grant permissions, by page, to those sharing a site. Google explains the reasons for this feature <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/sites\/bin\/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=1387384&amp;topic=1387383&amp;rd=1\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Course-Management Software vs. Sites<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For years, I&#8217;ve refused to use BlackBoard because it has made guest access so hard. In my field, writing &amp; composition, faculty routinely share lesson plans and syllabi, so Blackboard never met my needs. Our Eng. 383 syllabus has become a model for many other schools&#8217; training programs precisely because colleagues outside the class can find it with a Web search and view the content.<\/p>\n<p>That said, I&#8217;m pleased that Blackboard, seeing what the competition offers for free, has given faculty a &#8220;public&#8221; option for Bb sites. But I&#8217;ve argued elsewhere that Blackboard is an overpriced &#8220;transition&#8221; technology in the age of social media and Web 2.0 shared applications.\u00a0 Blackboard only recently added such technology to its product.<\/p>\n<p>For now, Sites lacks the sort of testing features that Blackboard has, but I don&#8217;t use quizzes that way. It would be possible, however, to link to an online gradebook created with Google Docs. You can see the results (but not students&#8217; grades!) in the latest iteration of my <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/ureng383\/\" target=\"_blank\">Eng. 383 syllabus<\/a>, used for training Writing Consultants at the University of Richmond.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How the Collaboration Works<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The process of granting permissions for a Google Site is a little tedious at first. I had to invite users to the site with &#8220;view&#8221; permissions&#8230;and they must have a Gmail account. But to my knowledge it cannot be one the University grants, either, as my site resides on the public servers at Google. Had I known this, I might have set up the site under UR&#8217;s rubric, but that change of service-providers had not occurred when I first set up my Google Site.<\/p>\n<p>The nature of collaboration and the presence of multimedia in modern writing classrooms make something like Google Sites, with page permissions enabled, essential to how I teach. That said, Google still needs to add a few features:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The ability to archive the site locally<\/li>\n<li>A somewhat more streamlined process for adding users.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, however, this free tool is phenomenal, and I plan to recommend it to colleagues.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image source: pre-Sites days in Eng. 103 classroom, late 1990s.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google What? I do not often read Google&#8217;s blog about their documents features, but recently I was looking for an answer to a few questions about Google Sites, the tool that I now use for all of my course syllabi. Unlike traditional web-site builders, Google Sites is collaborative; this is common for wikis, web-site software &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2011\/11\/25\/google-sites-page-level-permissions\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Google Sites: Page-Level Permissions<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2513,1138,99,2511],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classroom-technology","category-pedagogy","category-writing","category-writing-instruction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-29","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}