Click on the image below to access Chelan’s blog.
I chose to write about Chelan’s webspace because it differs from mine in a number of ways.
Authoring Tool
The most important difference is that Chelan chose to host the site on Google Sites, not UBC blogs. My experience with blogging is very limited, but I found WordPress to be not the most intuitive technology. While I do not know if the lack of WordPress literacy was part of Chelan’s decision to choose Google Sites, I can see how that gives her certain advantages. For once, Google Sites are easy to use, and the result is a clean and easy-to-navigate webspace. It also offers unlimited storage and is free to use (Steele, 2020). Also, should Chelan decide to keep adding other pages for other courses that she takes in MET program, she will end up with a good ePortfolio containing samples of her intellectual productions.
Affordances of the Authoring Tool
One limitation of the Google sites is that they do not have a blog engine, and so do not afford comments. While not impossible, adding a comment box would require some coding knowledge, and they are either not free or contain ads. At the same time, with our course not offering weekly discussion forums on Canvas, leaving comments on each other’s blog spaces is pretty much the only way to communicate with each other. For example, I really wanted to comment with my guess for Task 6, but I could not (Is it The Lion King?).
References
Steele, H. (2020, July 8). Google Sites vs WordPress: Which is Better? Superbwebsitebuilders. https://superbwebsitebuilders.com/google-sites-vs-wordpress/
Thank you for the link! I also noted the lack of commenting (after the fact) and was sad to hear that the new version of google sites does not support that, but there are ways around it, which I am currently investigating to make that an option! And yes – it was the Lion King 🙂
Thank you for your comment, Chelan! I hope you’ll figure something out about the Comment box! I did some search on that, and it looks like it’s going to be a bit tricky, but then you’ll know how to do it for your next Google site.