A "Byte of Information" to Satisfy Your Appetite for Technology... Embedding Google Calendar

March 31, 2015

Are you the type of teacher that frequently “forgets” to update your homework assignments on your classroom website? Do you get excuses from your students that the work was not posted so they didn't do it or phone calls from parents with a similar message? Well those days are soon to be gone with this week’s Byte of Information...always satisfying your hunger for new technology uses in the classroom.

When I was teaching, I often forgot to update my classroom website with the daily homework. Every time I would sit down to login and navigate my way through the site to get to where the homework needed to be posted, something would happen to derail my efforts..until I learned about embedding a Google Calendar into my website. This little tidbit of knowledge completely changed my communication with my students and their parents by creating a fast and easy way for me to post assignments, reminders, due dates, and test/quiz dates on my website in just a few easy clicks.

As most people are aware, Google Calendars (along with other Google tools) updates live. This makes for an easy solution to getting homework and other important date related information up onto a classroom website in a quick and efficient manner. The process is very simple.

The first step is to create a Google Calendar, owned by you, that is designated for your class(es). You can do this by going to Google Calendar and on the left side of the screen click the drop down menu next to “My Calendars” and select “Create New Calendar”. A new screen will appear that looks like this:

Now you will need to fill in the various fields. In Calendar Name, name it as you would like it to appear when students/parents click on it (for example, I named mine Mrs. Lion-Bailey’s Homework or Social Studies Homework). You do not need to give the calendar a description or location, unless you would like to. Check to ensure that the Calendar Time Zone is correct. Lastly, and most importantly, check the box next to “Share this calendar with others” and check the box next to “Make this calendar Public”. Scroll to the top of the screen and click “Create Calendar”. You now have the ability to add events to the calendar that are for a specific date, a range of dates, color coded, etc. Always make sure when adding an event that you are adding it to the correct calendar. You can check this by clicking on the event and selecting “edit event”. This will open a window that gives you detailed information about the event including on which calendar the event is located.

Your calendar is now ready to be either linked or embedded into your classroom website. This will allow you to update your calendar, posting homework assignments, projects, due dates, test/quizzes, extra help sessions, and more and have it update live on the student/parent side. You will no longer need to login to your classroom website each time you create or change a due date. You can add the link and/or embed the embed code for your new calendar through the “Site Manager” portion of your classroom website. Happy Tech-ing!