Uedit to Google Sites Transition / Digital Media Center

Uedit to Google Site Transition

Overview

In the summer of 2009 PLU implemented Google Apps for Education. Google Sites and Google Docs become available as new tools for developing and publishing student Digital Portfolios. The Digital Media Center compared Google Sites with Uedit to evaluate whether Google Sites can be considered a replacement for Uedit, especially for the development of Digital Portfolios for the Schools of Nursing and Business. Appended are functional comparisons of Uedit and Google Sites.

Key Strengths	Potential Concerns
Flexibility to control who can access and edit each site (Owners, Collaborators, Viewers)	Users can create an unlimited number of sites and there is no control of site naming
Wider content libraries and templates	Lack of institutional branding and no ability to adjust existing templates (themes)
Multiple page layout templates Web Page Dashboard Announcements File Cabinet List Start Page	No application programming interface (API) for customization of themes or migration of content in or out of sites
50 site templates (themes)	Ad Sense integration may have Web site policy implications
Variety of page widgets for insertion on pages Google Video and YouTube well integrated
Full integration with Google Docs for easy insertion of Google Docs files into Webpage
Extensive online help and tutorials

Recommendation

We recommend that Google Sites replace Uedit as the supported application for the creation of personal Web sites and digital portfolios. Any new portfolios may be created in Google Sites or free-form in personal Web space. Uedit will be supported through the life-span of all digital portfolios that currently exist in Uedit, which we anticipate will end after the 2011-12 academic year. New workshops will be developed for creating digital portfolios using Google Sites. We will encourage and support students to transfer current Uedit portfolio content to Google Sites.

Digital Media Center