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

Engaging Learners In A Digital World (Irish - Module 4)

Durrington, Berryhill, and Swafford (2006) stated that "to encourage high student interactivity in an online setting, the learning environment must be supportive, open, and respectful" (p. 191).  In the digital world that we live in today technology is a highly integrated part of most people's everyday lives.  In order to create the supportive environment that Durrington, Berryhill, and Swafford discussed technology is a critical element to include.

One project that I have been working on with a coworker is presenting free web 2.0 tools to the staff of the school that we teach at.  The goal of the monthly trainings is to show a variety of web 2.0 tools from several different types of use.  We have created a website that organizes all of the tools by category, gives a brief overview of the tool, provides a few suggestions of how the tool could be used, as well as any helpful resources.  The trainings that we have provided have been well received by the staff, and they are beginning to be more comfortable with the technology, as well as utilizing it in their daily teaching.

Email has become one of the standard ways to communicate through the internet, but there are many other ways to communicate.  Communication can occur either in real time, or through postings.  Wikis and blogs allow people to make an initial posting, and then receive feedback from others.  Skype allows people to communicate in real time through either video chatting or audio chatting.  It also allows single people or groups of people to connect with each other.

The internet has expanded the potential for collaboration through shared documents such as Google Docs.  People can also collaborate in wikis on a common topic.  Blogs allow the orignal person to post thoughts on a topic, and then people to collaborate through the comments posted.  There are also several graphic organizer websites that allow users to collaborate on ideas.  The website used to create the embedded graphic organizer is one that allows users to collaborate on a common document.

Content is a quickly growing area of the internet.  According to Did You Know there are 540,000 words in the English language, that is five times the number of words during Shakespeare's time.  With this increase in words has also come the growth in the amount of content knowledge.  The challenge in the digital world is being able to access all of the content available.  Wikipedia is a good resource for an overview of a variety of content.  There are many specialized organizations that create and share new content.  Many of these organizations also publish journals that are available online.  Another place that has a large amount of content is online forums.  A forum is a place where people can post a question or problem and then others make comments back.  This online forum format helps to create a lot of content in specific areas.