Google Sites Research Project Reflection

Developing a website has never been easier with Google Sites. In the Google Sites Research Project students broke into groups and researched a famous American President. Each person in the group was assigned a web page on the research project. The assignment was laid out in three parts. First, students had to create a Google Doc and share it with each of their group members. From there they were able to collaboratively do research. Each team’s Google Doc evolved differently. Some groups separated their research by subject. Some groups started gathering random facts. It was fascinating how they were communicating and collaborating inside the document. Some groups would make chat rooms, some would use comments, some groups would type directly in the document. One group used different font colors to signify who made each addition. It was surprising the amount of participation and communication that was happening. Another thing that was surprising was how quickly the research was collected. Normally a three-day process, most groups collected the data in a day. Next, the students got together to create their own google site. It started out rather slowly but once they got into the project they were sharing ideas and helping each other in the group and some even outside their group. The projects turned out decently. In the future, I would have stricter guidelines on what to include on each page but in all the students enjoyed it and learned a lot.