Google Calendar Organizes Everywhere

Sync it across devices and access it from anywhere

Listen. If for no other reason, use Google Calendar because you can access it anywhere. Update something on your app and it is automatically updated on your computer. The best part of this is that it also changes on every device of everyone who is subscribed to your calendar. Just like anything, you have to get your parents and students to understand how the system will work and you need to be consistent with using it. Once you’ve done that, you can adjust rehearsal times, dates of events, and anything else calendar related and it will push out instantly to everyone who relies on your calendar – what a way to stay in the know!

BONUS! Your Google Keep lists and Google To-Do lists are easily accessible inside your calendar. Don’t use those Google products yet? Stick around for a while…if you haven’t heard the secret yet, I’m kind of obsessed with Google!

Plays nice with others: organize more than just the date and time

Attach applicable documents

A few years ago, I shared this post which goes over a ton of the capabilities of Google Calendar and includes some instructions on how to even do lesson plans  that you can SO EASILY share with others. Check it out for some how-to video tutorials.   

Once your families are used to Google Calendar and rely on it for their information you can attach appropriate documentation to support and provide more information for events. Here’s an example: at the end of this month, we are taking our students to play at a local hockey team’s game. On the event on the calendar my band families can see the name of the event and the time. When they click on it, they can also see the permission form, information letter about the event, and the ticket order form. When used efficiently, you can even circumvent the necessity to upload things to a website – attach them to the calendar instead (or in my case, in addition to – hah!)

**then all you have to do is train your students and families to CHECK THE GOOGLE CALENDAR!**

Share, invite, stay (and keep others) updated

Two words: sharing capabilities

Embed on a website – it is SO EASY to embed your calendar on a website by copying your embed code that is found in the calendar settings! Just like anything Google, the three dots are your key to all of the things – when you visit “calendar.google.com” you will see your calendar and on the left side of the window you will see a list of all of the calendars that you have created or subscribed to. When you hover over one of them you’ll see the magical 3 dots – click on them next to any of your calendars to find the embed code as well as other great sharing settings.

Share individual events, invite specific people, and check to see who has accepted your invitation. If you do invite specific people (think band parent meetings, department meetings, band council events, volunteer events, etc) then there are even more options to email all of the attendees a message or notify them if there is any kind of change. This is all so streamlined!

TIme slots – hello parent meetings or pass off times for students! You can create an event with time slots and invite others to sign up for a slot to meet with you or complete a task. Your calendar also has the capability to send a reminder to all involved before your event.

Use Google Classroom? Your assignments/events from classroom will automatically appear on your calendar and on the calendar of your students in your class! What?!

Google Calendar makes it easy to stay organized!

Easy to use!

I use Google Calendar at school, for my website, and for my personal life. I have various school calendars that I am either the owner of (band calendar, band director calendar, full orchestra calendar) or subscribed to (school wide calendar, committee calendars, etc.) along with my personal calendars (flipping band director calendar, personal family calendar shared with my husband). When I open my Google Calendar app, I can see all of these calendars on one screen at once or I can select which one or ones I want to look at by checking and unchecking the boxes next to each calendar name.

Creating an event is SO EASY – click on the + and add your event details.

Changing an event is as easy as dragging and dropping or clicking on the event and editing it.

I dare you to go to calendar.google.com and play around for 5 minutes – you’ll figure so much of it out in that amount of time! If you can’t figure something out or have a specific question, shoot me an email or comment here and I’ll help you out 🙂 Google also has some pretty good Q&A help resources that can usually get you answers pretty quickly.

Go get organized!

Do you already use Google Calendar? What are your favorite features?