My project is a two part and focuses on a Google App that I am the least comfortable with-- Google sites. I find Google sites to be the LEAST intuitive App available, and the most confusing one to work with. However, I had a purpose. As president of the local teacher's union, I needed a way to stay in communication with members across more than 5 buildings, as well as a way to archive documents like meeting minutes and updates. I thought perhaps a Google Site might be perfect. I hope that the site can be one that members of the HEA can use as a resource or communication tool, while providing some stable, generic information about the mission of the HEA.
At the same time, I am newly recruited to help run the Greater Hartford Youth Football Association's Minicanes Teams. Next year, my football-loving son will be playing for the team, and I'll be there anyways, so why not? What a good way to become involved in a great program with two good teacher friends, Tracy Thompson and Gigi Stone! So I volunteered my less than stellar Google Sites experience to create the Minicanes' first website. I hope that coaches, staff members and parents are able to use the site to get valuable information like procedures, schedules, directions to games and forms.
The first site I created was the Hartford Education Association site. Here's a screen shot of the site:
It took me a whole to figure out how to edit the pages and get things set up the way I wanted to. I did a lot of googling like "How to __________ in Google Sites." You fill in the blank. I am sure I googled it. I have some basic information about the officers for both the teachers and the support staff, as well as meeting dates and times, and I even added a place where I can update members of issues. For example, the most recent issue was the fact that of the 17 companies that employees send 403b retirement contributions to, ZERO of them were compliant with the IRS regulations.
About a week later, I started on the minicanes site. For this website, we needed our own url-- something the parents and community would be able to remember. So I resisted the urge to call my computer nerd brother, and purchased the desired url from a website (yikes). Then I figured out how to add that url to the google site. This whole process was tricky to me, and hopefully I didn't make a mistake. All I know is that when you type www.minicanes.com into your browser, you get to the right site. Check it out!
I will know if I am successful with these sites if people use them. I haven't explored it too much, but I hope that google tracks data about the sites like blogger does. If parents and staff find the sites to be useful then I have done what I set out to do. While, I can't share the url for the HEA site until I share the site with returning members, please check out the Minicanes site, and provide any feedback you have!
