For the next few weeks, we'll be breaking down Google Calendar little by little! Hopefully, this tutorial will help explain how to use Google Calendar effectively, but also show you all the wonderful features Google Calendar has!
To begin using Google Calendar, log in to your school account, click on the waffle (the 9 dot box on the top right of your screen, and find Calendar.)
On the left sidebar, you'll have 3 default items: 1. A mini calendar you can hide or show as you wish. 2. A section called "My Calendars". 3. A section called "Other Calendars".
To open any of those items, just click on the arrow on the LEFT side of these headings. To close them, just reclick the arrow on the LEFT.
Once you've opened "My Calendars", you'll notice that you have 3 default calendars - a calendar with your name, a birthday calendar, and a reminders calendar.
Your default calendar with your name: This is the calendar you'll want to use for all of your personal items you'd like to keep track of. Unless you are clicked on a different calendar, all your events should default to this calendar. In a later Tech Tuesday, we'll look at who can see this calendar!
The birthdays calendar automatically lists birthdays of people in your contacts. These contacts are the contacts you've added to Gmail if you've added a person's birthday. It will also list birthdays of people from Google+ that are in your circles (if the birthday is listed.)
The reminders calendar allows you to set reminders for specific items you'd like to be reminded of.
To create a new calendar, click on the little arrow on the right side of MY CALENDARS. There are 2 choices - Create Calendar and Settings. Choose Create Calendar.
Once you click, you'll have a popup where you'll name your calendar, put a description if you'd like, set a location (more on this in a later Tech Tuesday), set the time zone, and share this calendar. We'll talk more about sharing, but you'll want to keep your calendars private unless you'd like to share. If you plan on putting your calendar on a website, it will need to be PUBLIC!!
Then at the bottom, click CREATE CALENDAR.
Under the OTHER CALENDARS section, you can add a co-worker's calendar by typing in their email address. Their calendar will show up in your list of calendars.
Other options include BROWSE INTERESTING CALENDARS which we'll use to add resource calendars to your calendar. This will be in a later Tech Tuesday. If you have a URL of someone's calendar, you can add by URL. You can import calendars, and then you have settings.
Maybe you have an Outlook calendar you've used and want to put all your items into your Google Calendar, export the calendar from Outlook and save to your computer. Then import the calendar and locate it on your computer. If you do this, the items you exported will show up on your Google calendar, but won't update if you add more items to your Outlook calendar. Just start using your Google Calendar! :)
Now that you have more calendars on your page, you can "turn on" and "turn off" your calendars just by clicking on them. You'll see the color in front of your calendar go away and all the events will go away as well. To turn the back on, simply click on the calendar you'd like to see and it will again appear.