I'm embarrassed to admit this, but, I rarely write anything on a calendar. I know, you're probably thinking that I use a calendar app on my iphone - I don't have an iphone. However, I do play with my daughter's or son's iphones occasionally. Back to the calendar. I put appointment reminder cards on the refrigerator and that's about it. So, I went out on limb and decided to investigate Google Calendar. It's wonderful! In addition to being free - which is always a plus - it is incredibly easy to use. Google Calendar allows you to create calendars of just about any date range and you can customize the design in numerous ways. You can also share your calendar with others and import information from any other Google calendar - maybe from other programs or applications, I'm not certain yet - and other users can import your information.
There are many items you can add to your calendars. Little person icons can be added to any appointments or events scheduled that include quests and alarm clock icons can be added to any date that has a reminder attached to it. I haven't yet seen everything that you can add.
Google Calendar would make an excellent classroom resource. Teachers could have a calendar with scheduled events - homework, topics being studied, etc. - from which the students could import items into their own calendars. This would be a great lesson. Students could learn how to create and manage their calendars - never an excuse that "I didn't know it was due." Parents could also benefit from this Web 2.0 tool. As long as they have an internet connection, parents would always know what was happening in their child's class.
I've started my calendar and am proud to say that I actually have 4 events entered. I'm even toying with the idea of making a calendar for my preschool class and inviting the parents to create one of their own - or at least keep track of mine.
Here's the link. I highly recommend it.
https://accounts.google.com/NewServiceAccount?service=cl&continue=https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli%3D1%26auth%3DDQAAAIUAAACSaoLxAfxDomDgzmfsClLNHgc3jPfwxmJcLx2dyM5d-KktZgMRFd3smqQJ20ZD5Y7WcXOV3pEbov8aZc1Lad2-lCs9zEtNa7a1c8QBUu7UL5HjvU5nt5PRuncC_yvstuQd5wpQOnF5TR1yIniKzRxZk_unW9ocP-ERBeM77iMmj-gsqmeJCnJ81GyRkLLJDTY&followup=https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli%3D1%26auth%3DDQAAAIUAAACSaoLxAfxDomDgzmfsClLNHgc3jPfwxmJcLx2dyM5d-KktZgMRFd3smqQJ20ZD5Y7WcXOV3pEbov8aZc1Lad2-lCs9zEtNa7a1c8QBUu7UL5HjvU5nt5PRuncC_yvstuQd5wpQOnF5TR1yIniKzRxZk_unW9ocP-ERBeM77iMmj-gsqmeJCnJ81GyRkLLJDTY
I think it's neat that Google Calendar allows you to share your calendar with the public. My understanding is that you can also choose not to give the public the option to edit your calendar, which is something a company I used to work for would do with their internal calendar. If you had a classroom blog/website (or in the case of my job, a company internal website) you could post the calendar there as a kind of one stop shop for parents and students to know when homework was due.
ReplyDeleteI know, isn't is marvelous? I hadn't thought about the 'editing by outsiders' dilemma until I started creating mine. I'm glad there is the option to keep editing away from the students - sure would be an easy way to get an extension on an assignment!
DeleteI have to tell you this story:
DeleteI had this high school teacher (we'll call her Ms. Hammer (as in a bag of)). She's write up in the corner of the white board when a test was and what it would cover. Nothing out of the ordinary there, right? Well...that was the ONLY copy of when the test would be. How do I know that? More than once someone in the class would change the date of the test and she's say, "oh, I guess I got the date mixed up" and give us the test on the new date.
Isn't education fun?