E-Portfolios for Academic Purposes

Creating and Managing a Google Site as an ePortfolio

Victoria Walters

5/16/2013

Contents Creating a Site ......................................................................................................................................... 1

Sharing the Site ....................................................................................................................................... 2

Customizing the site ................................................................................................................................ 3

Adding a New Page ................................................................................................................................. 4

Customizing your Navigation .................................................................................................................. 5

Adding content – Text and Images ......................................................................................................... 7

Adding content – Google docs ................................................................................................................ 8

Adding content – Attachments ............................................................................................................... 9

Embedding External Content .................................................................................................................. 9

In this document you will find instructions on how to create, manage and customize a Google site. You can work through it in order, or go straight to the section your need.

Creating a Site 1. In order to create a site you need to navigate to your Google sites domain and click on the

‘Create’ button.

2. You should give your site a name. It will autocomplete the site location, which you do not

need to change. You can also click on ‘Select a Theme’ to choose a colour scheme for your site. (Don’t worry you can do this at any time throughout the process too.) Then click ‘Create Site’.

3. Your site will then be generated

Sharing the Site

4. You will then need to decide who you want to see or share your site. In the top right hand corner click on ‘Share’. The default option is set to ‘Private’ meaning only you can access the site.

5. To change this click on ‘Change’. You can then decide who can view your site from the options given. Click Save, when you are finished. You can go back and change this at any time.

6. You can also add collaborators to your site. Collaborators can also edit the site. Simply type

in the Google email address of the collaborator and it will email the link.

Customizing the site 7. Now you are ready to starting amending and customizing the look of your Google site. 8. To change the colours, font and theme, click on ‘More’ and ‘Manage Site’ in the top right

corner.

9. This menu allows you to make various different changes to your site. In order to change the

title of the site you can simply change the text in the first box. If you do not wish this to appear on all your pages, uncheck the box.

10. To change the colours of your site, click on ‘Colours and Fonts’.

11. Inside this menu system, you can customise a range of different options. It also generates a

preview so you can see what difference the changes will make, before you accept them.

12. If you make any changes, you must click ‘Save’ at the top, before then clicking the link to

take you back to your site.

13. In order to change the layout or do anything further with the site. You will always need to

turn the editing on. To do this Click on the pencil tool in the top right corner.

14. This will take the page you are currently on, into editing mode. Now you will see a further

toolbar appear. This toolbar will allows us to make any other changes, including adding content and changing layout.

15. The generic default for a page in a single column pain layout, to change this, turn the editing on and click on ‘Layout’. This layout change will only apply to this page.

Adding a New Page

16. In order to add a new page you should turn off editing mode of that page by clicking ‘Save’, and then navigate back to your homepage. Then click on the icon in the top right corner.

17. A menu should open that allows you to create and name the new page.

Type a name for your page.

Then choose where the page location.

Putting the page at top level will create it at the same level as the home page. If you choose to put it under another page, this will create a subpage.

When you are done, simply click ‘Create’ at the top of the page.

Customizing your Navigation

18. As you can see your new page will automatically appear in your navigation on the left. The navigation is automatically created as part of the theme you have chosen. However, you can customize your navigation bar in a number of different ways.

19. In order to do this you need to click on ‘More’ and ‘Edit Site Layout’, at the top of the page. 20. This will change the screen into editing mode

21. You can change the navigation to horizontal in this menu screen. You can enable or disable the sidebar navigation here too.

22. However if you do change to a horizontal

navigation bar, it will not automatically add you page like before. In order to do this, hover over the menu bar until it turns blue, then click it to edit it.

23. In the next menu, you can click ‘Add page’, then use the arrow to change the order of your pages.

24. You can also choose the type of link you wish to have between Boxes, Tabs and Links.

Adding content – Text and Images 25. Turn the editing on. 26. You can now simply begin to type into your page. 27. To insert any other type of object, you can click on the ‘Insert’ button in top left-hand

corner. There are loads of different options to choose from here. In order to insert an image, you will need to save the image first.

Adding content – Google docs 28. Through this menu you can also insert a Google doc. Use the Insert menu to choose

Document. This should open a list of all the documents in your Google Drive.

I have chosen to insert a Google presentation. This opens up a secondary menu with some options to choose from. The really useful thing about using a Google document, is that it actually embeds into the webpage, making it a lot easier to access for your audience. (You can convert any document you already have into a Google doc by uploading the file within your Google Drive page)

Adding content – Attachments 29. Sometimes it may not be appropriate to

embed a file into your webpage, you may want students to download it. IN this case it is better to add it as an attachment.

30. To do this simply Click ‘Add Files’ at the bottom of the page and browse for the file. (If you cannot see Add Files you need to turn this feature on. Click on ‘More’ and ‘Page Settings’. Make sure there is a tick in the box that says ‘Allow attachments’, then ‘Save’.

Embedding External Content

31. There are many Web 2.0 tools available that can be embedded directly into your Google site. Below are instructions for just one type, but the same method should work with any Web 2.0 tools that have an ‘Embed’ feature.

32. Somewhere on the website there will be a ‘Share’ option . Click this button and look for an ‘Embed’ option.

33. You need to copy the Embed code that the website will generate for you.

34. Now go back to your Google site and turn the editing on. 35. In the toolbar look for the ‘<HTML>’ button. Click the button.

36. Once you are inside the HTML editor you can simply past the Embed code you copied. It will always work best, if you put it at the end of anything else that appears in that box.

37. Click Update and you should see a Google gadget in your page. Click Save to view the preview of your gadget in your Google site page.

38. At any point you can go in and change the setting of any

document or embedded tool by turning the editing on and click the settings icons, next to the gadget.