Classroom vs. Site

This year, our district has made significant strides toward being a Google Apps for Education school district.  All of our faculty and students have their own Google Account and have been working to understand the benefits afforded by working in the cloud.

As we drew the year to a close we started Summer training for our English Language Arts teachers, as they would be receiving a Chromebook cart in each of their classrooms.  As part of that training, one of the questions that popped up was,  “Which is better? Google Sites or Google Classroom.”

To answer that question, I’ve provided a few pieces of information for you (benefits of each), as well as a few videos to help newbies understand each tool:

Google Classroom

• Teachers can assign students to their classroom.
• Assign and grade work within the classroom.
• Use the stream to post announcements or assignments
• Link to Google Drive to assign work.
• Add links to YouTube Videos
• Add links to URLs
• Allow students to post or comment (easy to disable)

Google Classroom

Discussion Forums using Google Classroom

Google Sites

• Freedom to create the look and feel of a Teacher Webpage/Site
• Add multiple pages
• Link to Google Drive to add assignments
• Create a File Cabinet to share files as a department
• Create an Announcements Page to post thoughts and discussion topics
• Embed any content you need (YouTube, Easel.ly, Etc…)
• Add links to websites, etc….
• Open site up for discussion boards
• Embed a Google Calendar for a list of events
• Have students create their own Google Site as a digital portfolio
• Use a Google Site as a Wiki where students can work on group projects.  

Setting up a Google Site