10th Grade — Portfolio Website with Google Sites

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

If a stranger visited your portfolio website, what's the very first thing you'd want them to see?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How do we organize, build, and publish a portfolio website to showcase a semester of work?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Plan a site structure (Home + at least one page per project category: Analog Design, Photoshop, 3D Design).
Build a Google Sites portfolio and upload examples of finished work with short captions.
Publish and share the finished site link.

🧰 What You'll Need

Computer with internet access
Google Sites (school Google account)
Photographed/exported copies of all semester work

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Plan

Do Now (5 min): if a stranger visited your portfolio, what's the first thing you'd want them to see? Mini-lesson (8 min): what makes a good portfolio sitemap.
Independent planning (27 min): sketch a sitemap on paper (Home + one page per project category) and gather/export images of your best work.
Share (5 min).

Day 2: Build — Structure

Do Now (5 min).
Demo (8 min): creating a Google Site and building page structure.
Build (27 min): create your Google Site and build out the page structure and navigation.
Save progress (5 min).

Day 3: Build — Content

Do Now (5 min).
Build (35 min): upload your work to the correct pages and write a 1-2 sentence caption for each piece.
Save & screenshot (5 min).

Day 4: Finalize, Critique & Publish

Do Now (5 min).
Peer review (10 min): review a partner's site for clarity and navigation.
Final fixes (20 min).
Publish (10 min): publish the live link.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

📚 Key Words

Portfolio Website: An online, organized showcase of a designer's best work.
Site Navigation: The menu/structure that lets a visitor move between pages of a website.
Caption: A short piece of text explaining a piece of work -- what it is, what tools were used, and what was learned.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Published site scored with a rubric: clear navigation, at least one piece of work per project category, captions present, and site is actually published/shareable.

Exit Ticket: Share your published portfolio link and name one piece of work on it you're proudest of.

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📤 How You Submit This — For Credit

How you submit today's work depends on what kind of work it was. Physical/paper work (most of this semester so far): photograph it with a classroom camera, upload the photo from its SD card onto a computer, and save it into your portfolio -- that upload is your submission, and the physical piece itself is yours to keep, the same as in Grade 9 (your notebook is the one thing with a home base in the room, and even that's your call to bring home when you want it). Digital work (once you're producing files in Photoshop, second semester on): no camera needed -- instead, EXPORT the file. Export your finished project as a JPG, as a PNG, AND save a copy as a PSD (all three), then upload all three into your portfolio. Either way: the portfolio upload, with a description, is what actually counts as turning the assignment in for credit.

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week, add your best finished or in-progress piece to your portfolio (the Google Drive folder you started in Grade 9, becoming your Google Sites portfolio in Lesson 10) with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what tool/skill it used, and one thing you learned. Keep it current -- don't save it all for the portfolio-website lesson.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Portfolio Website with Google Sites.” This project asked: “How do we organize, build, and publish a portfolio website to showcase a semester of work?” I used Portfolio Website by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry · Domain 5: Publishing Digital Media

🔗 Want to Learn More?

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same site-structure and navigation planning an Intro to Computer Science or Business class covers.

Career Connection: A live portfolio site is the single most-requested asset across every career on the Careers hub.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Publish your site for real, share the live link with a teacher, and ask for one honest piece of feedback. Start here: click the actual publish button and open the live link yourself in a new browser tab first, to confirm it works before you send it to anyone.
Add a dedicated page connecting your work to a specific career from the hub, explaining why that path fits you. Start here: reread that career's actual page on the hub and copy down its two or three listed required skills before writing, so your explanation references real requirements, not guesses.