Google apps sites question

[edutech4schools]

I have been playing with G apps for ed and love all the different features, however, the school want the main website to be set up in G apps, which I have done. This requires the 'users can make sites public' to be ticked in service settings however I don't want the pupils to be able to make sites public. This setting seems to be an all or nothing and is my one sticking point.

 

Is it possible for the admin to grant some sites to be public but stop the setting from showing when a new site is created by a user?

 

Any other workarounds?

[AngryTechnician]

What happens if you enable the option, make a site public, then disable the option?

[edutech4schools]

Just gave that a go and the site is no longer public.

[edutech4schools]

opps hold on I had also made some other changes. Ill create a new site and try again.

[edutech4schools]

No I was correct it instantly makes all public sites non public.

[CyberNerd]

I looked into this a while back and concluded it wasn't possible, and that Google sites is still a bit too limited for a full school website.

The staff here want the students sites to be publicly available anyway..?!??

[edutech4schools]

What if something was put up that is not nice? How do you monitor / control the content?

[edutech4schools]

Just mailed google support.

[edutech4schools]

Google came back and told me this is not possible but should be easy to add. I have created a feature request.

 

I have thought of a few workarounds.

 

1. Add another domain so have one for the students and one for the staff and set up accordingly.

 

2. As these are primary students I just wanted an area they could do web stuff so I could disable the sites service but create class areas in sites with the pupils allowed to edit content. They then cant create sites themselves but still have a class area they can log into that would look the part.

 

Just need to do some testing.

[CyberNerd]

What if something was put up that is not nice? How do you monitor / control the content?

 

It's used quite heavily by the IT Teaching staff - they keep an eye on things.

The students have lessons in using google sites, so they know the consequences.

Having just answered a question about chat in schools I feel that I'm in quite a lucky position to be in a good school. YMMV

[edutech4schools]

I have just realised but not tested you don't have to tick 'users can make sites public' to allow the world access to your sites. I could use 'anyone with the link can access this site' feature in the sites settings.

 

Then if students create a site it is hidden from the general world but could be linked to from the main site if a teacher needed to.

 

This might partially do what I need. I will test and post back.

[edutech4schools]

Pants. When you remove the 'users can make sites public' tick it also removes the access by link feature.

 

I have setup another Google apps for ed site (took 5 mins) and will probably use this for the pupils unless anyone can think of an alternative.