Google Sites (JotSpot) As Barebones CMS?

Google Sites (JotSpot) As Barebones CMS?

Alexandre Enkerli -
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Did anyone try out Google's new Sites app? It's based on JotSpot (which they bought 18 months ago, AFAICT), which used to be a kind of wiki/blog platform targeted at intranet and other team uses. The Google Sites overview has an example of a classroom application of the Google Sites model (apparently in connection with Google Classrooms). There's also a mention of classroom use in a short demonstration video.

Now, this Sites app doesn't seem very feature-rich as a Content/Course Management System. But if this app is very easy to use, it could be useful as a kind of barebones CMS for classroom use. In fact, chances are that content created with Google Sites could be integrated into other systems, including Moodle.

 

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回复Alexandre Enkerli

Re: Google Sites (JotSpot) As Barebones CMS?

Charles Bowser -
I gave a very cursory look to Google Sites last night. I currently have my schools email through Google Apps and I am pleased with it, however Sites, for now, seems "too" simple. The text editor was VERY limited. It might be possible to copy content from a word processor but I didn't try. There didn't seem to be a way to link all the sites together in a front page. Each "site" would/could be a course and there is a way to restrict access to each course, however there doesn't seem to be a way to make a frontpage like Moodle to tie it all together. Of course you probably could use the Google Apps partnerpage and then run a link from there but that seems needlessly complex. IMHO (I was at a conference where they talked about acronyms and I just couldn't resist) I believe that Google Sites has a long way to go before it would be any serious competition to Moodle or other mature CMS systems.
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回复Charles Bowser

Re: Google Sites (JotSpot) As Barebones CMS?

Alexandre Enkerli -
I didn't see Google Sites as competition to dedicated CMS but I did see it as a supplement of sorts, especially for "quick and dirty" teamwork.
And I did play with it for a little while. Maybe it's just the way my mind works but I began to see some possibilities. Especially for informal collaboration between people working on a specific project.
So, after trying out a few things, I think I can see myself discuss it with students. I've rarely had team projects in my course but it could be a good way to make teams autonomous.
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回复Alexandre Enkerli

Re: Google Sites (JotSpot) As Barebones CMS?

Steve Cisler -
We used jotspot in 2006 when it was independent, and it worked well for the most part. Some of the features like the spreadsheet were not that great, but support was good and it served our needs. Then Google bought it, and the buzz was they bought it for the talent, not the software. The head guy has nothing to do with it or with Sites. He's doing something else at Google. Worse, the software lost some features and support was atrocious and sporadic (for customers who had paid for site licenses). We gave up on it last summer. Sites is very light weight, meant to appeal to a large number of gmail/google apps. users, not to jotspot administrators. It tries to group you by domain. For instance, I'm at Santa Clara University but have no desire to hook up with other scu.edu sites users. It's a mystery why they think this is what people want.
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回复Steve Cisler

Re: Google Sites (JotSpot) As Barebones CMS?

Alexandre Enkerli -
Thanks a lot for the insight!
I did try JotSpot before Google bought them but had not worked extensively with it. Plus, I wasn't really aware of the "talent buy" angle.
The domain-specificity thing is a bit weird but it makes Sites look just a bit like Facebook was, a couple of years ago. Of course, Google Sites is part of Google Apps, which is also domain-specific. I used my concordia.ca account to try Sites out and there weren't many people building sites with it.
In case it wasn't clear, my intention in posting that query was just to share thoughts, not to promote Google's newer toys.

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