Instructifeature: Create teaching portfolios easily with Google Sites
February 17, 2009
My first electronic portfolio was done six years ago using Mozilla Composer and burned to a CD, and my student teaching advisor was thrilled to not have to wade through another four-inch-thick binder filled with plastic sleeves and teacher-themed paper. Back then, the CD was my compromise for privacy, as setting up a password-protected website was a lot more complex than it is now. These days, I’m helping student teachers create their own electronic portfolios, and Google Sites is the go-to tool for us.
Security and privacy is still a concern, and always will be, thanks to FERPA. Google makes it easy to make your site private, to share it with select individuals, or to make it entirely public and open to the world. Changing the sharing settings is a click away. If you’re submitting resumes, include a link and a note explaining how the hiring committee can access your portfolio, and in an interview, be prepared to share it.
Since Sites is a Google product, it works seamlessly with Google Docs (to save space, if you’re approaching the 100mb limit, storing files like your teaching philosophy in Docs and embedding them won’t count against your server space), YouTube (Google Video is sunsetting this year, sadly), Google Calendar, Picasa web albums…you get the picture.
One of the reasons we’ve gone with Google Sites is that the portfolio is never married to the university’s servers, and long after our students have graduated, they can keep updating and accessing their portfolio without worrying their alma mater will someday push them out to make way for new student portfolios. It’s ad-free, unlike many other free websites, and very simple to edit and maintain. If you want your own domain name, you can purchase it and have it redirect to your Google Sites page.
It’s not perfect, though. For instance, you can’t download the source files easily, although I’ve heard rumors it’ll eventually be possible. I prefer Vimeo for video hosting, and the only embeddable content would have to be stored on YouTube, and be publicly available. There are several pre-designed themes (including one for teachers, if you’re into that!), and you can change the colors for just about any part of your site, but you can’t install custom themes. The limitations make it fairly foolproof, both for creators and for readers. If you are really committed to other services that don’t mesh with Google Sites, consider the Site a portal to your entire online presence.
To get started, get yourself a Google account if you don’t yet have one (and if you do have one, make sure it’s under a username you’d feel confident sharing professionally). Helen Barrett has a great tutorial (built within Google Sites) to guide you in creating your portfolio. You’ll have to sign in to each Google feature the first time you use it (Docs, Sites, etc) but your Google account name will be the same throughout. And since Google also allows you to have multiple sites, once your portfolio lands you a job, set up a new site for your classroom, and keep on learning. -GRETCHEN SCHAEFER
