Creating a website for your program or class with Google Sites
Online learning sites help learners
Meet learner expectations
An online learning site can help meet learner’s expectations to find information easily online and lets learners connect to learning materials from anywhere at any time.
Develop lifelong learning skills
Your site can provide a centralized platform for sharing information, resources, and interactive learning experiences and promotes lifelong learning by modelling the ways we can stay updated with the latest knowledge in online environments.
Online learning sites help teachers
Streamline classroom communications
You can cut down on the number of handouts and emails you need to share and the strategies you use to remember with whom you shared them.
Tailor your site to your specific needs
You can develop your site to meet your specific communication and collaboration needs and the needs of learners who attend your program.
Online learning sites can be anything you want
You can use the site as a simple communication space and post announcements, events, and calendars as well as course outlines and learning pathways with links to assignments, study materials and resources.
Or you can create mini-courses with embedded materials, interactive slides and quizzes. See two examples of this in the PDF.
Open the PDF
This resource from AlphaPlus was created by Tracey Mollins after a workshop series called Create an Online Learning Site. You can see all the workshop links and resources here: Creating an Online Learning Site Links.
If you’d like to learn more about whiteboards or schedule a demonstration, contact Tracey or our Quick Tech Help service.
Why is it important for us to understand this?
An essential 21st century skill is learning how to distinguish information that is reliable from disinformation, misinformation and fake news. Information literacy requires an understanding of the media landscape and knowledge about how to use our critical thinking skills in this landscape.
If we understand a little about how to verify information, it helps us analyze and evaluate the media we are consuming and interacting with and stops us from spreading misinformation.
Misinformation, disinformation and fake news
- Disinformation is information that is false or distorts reality. It is transmitted by means of mass media or social media. Its aim is to manipulate public opinion.
- Fake news is a publication that has the same structure as a news article, but contains exaggerated, distorted or false information. Fake news is a form of disinformation.
- Misinformation is information transmitted by mass media or social media that is considered to be truthful by the transmitter, but, in reality, distorts facts or is wrong.
Read more here: What is disinformation? (activities to do with learners)
Building lessons with practitioners
How can we verify the information we see online and make sure we are not spreading misinformation?
One place to find lessons to help us learn the skills and knowledge we need is MediaSmarts.
In this resource we explore part of a MediaSmarts lesson called Break the Fake: Verifying Information Online to help us build our resilience to online misinformation.
In this lesson, participants:
- Learn simple steps for verifying online information
- Practice verifying online information
- Understand digital literacy key concepts
- Create a media text
See all Information Literacy Resources.
Our idea that literacy workers might be interested in AI policies and guidelines came from a question that a literacy instructor asked in an Ai for Educators workshop, “I showed a learner how to use AI to get help on a simple task. Now that learner is using AI for everything. I feel that this is hindering them in developing some skills that they will need. How can I get them to stop?”
The facilitator, Shawn McCusker, suggested, “Work with the learner to create guidelines that work for you and that specific learner or group of learners in the specific contexts where they are learning.”
We thought this made sense. AI is so new that there are no great templates for the use of AI in adult literacy classrooms. Literacy instructors work with learners to create guidelines for the ways they will work together and are used to facilitating this process.
Here are three workshops presented by AlphaPlus where we discussed the topic of how to create a set of classroom AI guidelines to determine ways teachers and learners can use AI to support teaching and learning in specific contexts. We kicked off the conversation at a Showcase and took a deeper dive into the particulars and how tos in a series of workshops.
To see more about using AI in educational settings, check out our What is Generative AI? resource.
Virtual Showcase: AI policies, ethics and practices in LBS
“In this Showcase, three guest presenters plus three AlphaPlus staff members (Alan, Guylaine and Tracey) discussed how they are integrating AI into their practice and how they are thinking about AI policies and guidelines for organizations and for classrooms.” (November 2024)
Creating AI Policy with Learners
“This three-workshop series, facilitated by Tom Driscoll, is about what an AI policy for adult learners in literacy could look like. We will look at how to work with learners to create a policy that offers guidance for using AI ethically and safely to do research, make material more accessible and support creativity, communication and collaboration.” On the Padlet board, you can see how literacy instructors responded to the scenarios with thoughtful and well reasoned ideas about when using AI can support learning and when it can hinder developing certain skills and knowledge. (January 2025)
- Workshop 1 Slides and Recording
- Workshop 2 Slides and Recording
- Workshop 3 Slides and Recording and Padlet
AI Policy for Literacy Practitioners and Learners
AlphaPlus was invited by Calgary Learns to expand on part of what we presented at the November 2024 Showcase. Guylaine and Tracey facilitated the discussion. “Generative Ai for teaching and learning is still a relatively new technology. In this workshop, facilitated by AlphaPlus practitioners, we will discuss the why and when of using generative Ai tools in adult education classrooms. As the technology and our practices evolve, so do our questions. We will share some of the questions we have been grappling with and invite participants to add theirs to the conversation.” The stoplight discussion is one way to start the conversation about AI use with colleagues and learners. (Calgary Learns, April 2025)
Stoplight Discussion Template