Publishing the site

Once complete, the sites need to be published to allow people other than the editors to see them. There are a number of options that let you manage who can see the sites. This can be changed at any time. This is useful if you want to share the sites with parents or others at the end of the topic.

From the site homepage click on Publish.

 

 

This will show you the site’s URL, the end section of which can be altered by editing the text on screen. (Note that the URL must be unique and available, for example, each team site will need a different name - this could be achieved by just adding team numbers.)

 

 

Here you will also see Who can view my site and the option to Manage this. The Links option lets you control the visibility of the website. By default it will be restricted to only specific people can view the site. 

You can edit this by clicking Change.

 

 

Changing the Published site setting gives you a choice of:

• Restricted - Making the site only visible to people you share it with (requires users to have a Google account and sign in to view it)
• NTLP - Anyone with a NTLP account can find and view the site.
• Public - The site is published on the web for anyone to view without signing in (this would be needed for sharing with parents or a wider audience).

 

 

Once published, if you have made a site public, you can restrict how easy it is to find by going to Publish settings (found from the drop down arrow next to the Publish button) and requesting that the site is not findable with a search engine. This means that realistically someone would need a link to the site to find it.

 

 

These settings can be changed at any time and sites can be easily unpublished by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the Publish button on the site (which appears once it has been published).

 

 

Consider carefully what is on the sites before sharing with a wider audience, ensure you are aware of your school’s Internet acceptable use policy and also the policy on sharing names, images or anything else that could identify the students (if there is anything on the site).

 

Re-publish after making changes

Any changes made with the editor after a site has been published will not show up on the published site’s URL until the site is re-published. So remind students to update their published site by clicking the Publish button again, reviewing the changes and the clicking the Publish button again. They can also do this from the drop down arrow next to the publish button. 

 

 

The final task is to evaluate the sites. It’s recommended that groups evaluate each other’s sites and then provide feedback to each other. Give the students time to make any alterations needed at the end.

There are some basic things that need to be correct on the site, such as:

• Are there any spelling or factual errors?
• Is it all in their own words or have they copy and pasted text from other sites?
• Does the content make sense?
• Is there consistency through the site? 
• Have they added anything interesting of their own?

You can discuss and create your own set of evaluation criteria, but we have also made our own evaluation sheet for you to use if you wish (available here).

 

 

Plenary

Ask groups to exchange their feedback sheets with the groups who own the sites they reviewed. Give them time to read through and consider it as a group. Take some verbal feedback from each group about the websites they looked at and their views on the feedback they received.

• Do they agree with the comments?
• Were they helpful?
• What would they do to their site based on the feedback?
• Would they do anything differently if they did the project again? 

If time, try and give them some opportunity to make any improvements to their sites based on the feedback.