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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

21st Century Skills

This is a cross post from www.irishmathclass.com, my classroom blog.  Tonight I was getting caught up on email and Internet reading when I cam across this - A Parent's Guide to 21st Century Learning. This guide got me to thinking about how important 21st Century Skills are and that it we as educators really need to help educate parents on this topic.  

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Google Calendar Enhancing the Home/School Connection

Since the dawn of time teachers and parents have been trying to make better connections between home and school.  When parents ask their child "What do you have for homework tonight" the child either can't remember, or gives the default answer that they don't have any.  Google Calendar can help solve this problem.  


Google Calendar is a free online calendar website where you can keep your personal calendar, a shared calendar with a group of people who can all add to it, or a shared calendar with people where online one person can add to it.  


As a teacher with a Google Calendar you could create a calendar where you enter assignments and then share this calendar with students and parents.  You could also embed the calendar with assignments into a classroom website.  Below are the steps for creating a Google Calendar, steps for sharing the calendar with students and parents, and the steps to embed the calendar into a blog or website.  In order to create and share a Google Calendar you need to have a Google account already set up.  If you don't have one, follow these directions.     


Steps 1 & 2

Creating A Google Calendar

To create a new calendar, just follow these steps:1) Click the drop-down arrow to the right of My calendars
2) Select Create new calendar
3) Enter information about your new calendar
4) Click the Create calendar button

Steps 3 & 4






All of the calendars you create will be listed under My Calendars on the left side of your page. For each of the calendars, you can add, delete, and edit events any time you like.
Please note that there's a limit to the number of calendars you can create at one time. If you're receiving an error message when creating additional calendars, please wait 24 hours before trying again.

Sharing Your Google Calendar

Setps 1 & 2
1) Click the drop-down arrow to the right of the calendar that you want to share
2) Select Share this Calendar




Steps 3 & 4
3) Check the box to make the calendar public
4) Click Calendar Details
Step 5



5) In the Calendar Address area select the way the user of the shared calendar user will view the calendar.  
  • Select iCal if the user is going to view it in Apples program iCal.  
  • Select XML if the user is going to view the calendar in another calendar program.
  • Select HMTL if the user is going to put the address into an internet browser to view the calendar.  
6) Copy the address in the box that pops up and share this with the people you want to share the calendar with.  
Step 6

Embed the Calendar In A Blog or Website

Steps 1 & 2
1) Click the drop-down arrow to the right of the calendar that you want to embed
2) Click on Calendar Settings
Steps 3 & 4
3) Select and copy the code 
4) Paste the HTML code into your blog or website