Week 8: Google Calendar

We're so close to the end that I can smell the cupcakes!  [IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: This year's TECHsploration Cupcake Reception for all participants, great and small, will be held on Monday, August 27th from 12:30 to 1pm in the North Building Lobby.  For those of you who don't happen to have your "Opening Meetings 2012-2013" calendar handy, that is during the second half of lunch.  We hope that you will all take the opportunity to join us in good cheer as we chat about our tech triumphs, share our setbacks, and, above all, celebrate all that we've learned this summer!  More on this soon... I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog entry...].  At any rate, if you're just joining us and beginning your TECHsploration journey, I encourage you to scroll back to the beginning of the blog to peruse all the tools we've explored so far.  Remember to work at your own pace and explore things that are of interest to you!

Now, for this week's tool: Google Calendar.  As we draw nearer to the inevitable start of the school year, I know that many of us are already in the throes of planning our lessons.  Kudos to you!  As you prepare for this school year, one of the most valuable tools, in my opinion, that you can have in your toolbox is a good calendar system.  As a part of our Google Apps for Education suite, we have Google Calendar to fill this role.

So, this week, I challenge each of you to dig around in Google Calendar--there is much to discover!  Some of the features of Google Calendar are:

• it syncs with your smart phone, slate device, etc. so you always have the most up to date information.
• the Quick Add feature allows you to add an event to your calendar in "plain English."  I could type "Meet with Lynn at 10AM on Tuesday" into the Quick Add area, and Google will create an event on my calendar for in at the right time on the right date.
• you can invite people to events you create (much like Outlook) and the meeting will be added to their calendars if they choose to attend.
• you can create a calendar and share it with colleagues to either be able to view it or edit it with you.
• it integrates with Gmail so you can add events to Google Calendar from within your email.
• you can create Appointment Slots which allow others to sign up for meeting times with you...or in the case of 9th and 10th grade PE, sign up for classes :)
• you can subscribe to public calendars, such as the Days of the Cycle calendar, to view that information (without editing it).  There are also other public calendars outside the BMS community that you might want to subscribe to, like a concert series calendar or the United States holidays calendar.
• just like with Gmail, there are a lot of great "Labs" features you can add to Google Calendar under the Settings area.

I could go on and on about Google Calendar (Shannon and I have become quite acquainted with it as we have worked through the process of creating online "planners" for the MS and US!), but I want you to explore it yourself.  And for MS and US teachers, I highly recommend that you use this with your students!  Get them in the habit of putting all of their events in one place.  

You can always visit Google's Calendar Support page for further guidance here.

Tweet us your most creative ideas for using Google Calendar this year and any ideas that you'd like to try but aren't sure how to start--the whole Twitter community is here to help!  We've got 79 members on our BMS list!!  Will you be #80?

As always, have fun!