Web Presence

I have spent a lot of time in the past few years developing my web presence.  This year I didn't want to change the structure of my page, but I wanted to begin taking a look at the Site Analytics, continue developing my presence through social media, and try out Google Sites, so that I can better support students developing sites for instructional purposes.

Site Analytics

Now that I have explored the analytics available and how to access this information, I will begin to capture this each month, along with the other evidence I have committed to gathering.  In Weebly, which I use for our Lake George HS Library website, the analytics are very easy to access and read.  The first look gives you an immediate sense from the current week, and if you click further you can look a month back, with some additional information broken down into page views, and access points for the page.  All of these are useful data to collect, so I appreciate these options.

One drawback is that you cannot access the historical data of your analytics for a specific date range though, so I will need to be diligent about access these analytics on a regular basis to make the data collection useful when looking at the year in review.  The data that is included will help me to see how the site is being used, and could help me to better harness the possibilities here.  

Social Media Presence

This year I have expanded my social media to include Snapchat, in addition to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  I have also gotten better about posting more regularly... although this is always something to work on.  Right now I use Hootsuite to manage my posting, although I am looking for another option, which would allow me to post to more places (Hootsuite's free version limits you to 3 social media accounts).  My goal is to connect the physical space of the library to the virtual spaces, and connect students to literacy, inquiry, and making throughout.  Any time I have programming, events, etc. I include promotion at all of these levels, and try to point them all towards each other.  This also allows me to engage with students where they are at, and learn about the technologies they are using.  I recently discovered that my Instagram was set to private- I was wondering why I couldn't get them to follow the library there.  Since changing that I have begun to develop a following there.  The recent addition of Snapchat has allowed me to have students become my teachers, to have them train me on how to best use this app.  I am also consistently using the hashtags #LGreads and #LGMakers to highlight what students are doing with literacy and making through our library and school community.  All of these elements are to create a strong and unified purpose in our library learning commons environments, both physical and virtual.

Google Sites

Because we are a Google school, and use all of the Google products throughout instruction, I wanted

to experience site creation using Google Sites.  Creating a site with the tool prepares me to support students when they are using the tool.  I had the opportunity to do this a few months ago, when creating a resource site for a 12th grade English project.
Google Sites has come a long way, and does allow for a nice looking site to be created with minimal learning curve.  The options are not super extensive, but give you the ability to build a nice clean looking site.  The biggest complaint I have is that creating columns in the layout wasn't intuitive, and you had to "force" the system to create that look.  Overall, a nice option for site creation though.
One thing that I regret is that I did not explore statistics before the project, so I did not set up Google Analytics.  This would have allowed me to see how much seniors used this resource, and therefore better supported them, both this year and classes in the future.

There is always something new to learn in building a web presence, and so much possibility for connecting and building community.  As with so many aspects of this course, I could get lost in the options and spend hours more, but this gave me a push to try these next steps.