"Google Calendar" Your Lesson Plans

by Garrison Daily

Once you have a Gmail account,  you have a free, ginormous toolbox.

The biggest teacher timesaver of all, in my opinion, is simplifying the beloved lesson plans. I have been putting/creating my lesson plans on Google Calendar for a couple of years now, and I cannot rave about it enough.

1. Create the introduction, expectation, standards, and objectives on a Google Doc, which is akin to a WORD doc “in the cloud”.
2. Share that document with “Anybody with the link” and “Can View”.
3. Copy that link and paste it into the description area of an event on the Google Calendar.

In a nutshell, your plans can be altered at any time (on the document) and the viewers (students, parents, administrators with the link) will see the newest version whenever they click on it.

The Calendar comes with your Google account. You get a default calendar which will automatically appear when you go to Calendar. It will be named with your email name. I use this one for my own things (conference period, meetings, etc.). For lesson plans, I follow these steps:

1. Create a separate calendar for each period or subject (If your classes ever vary, this is the only way to go.)
2. Create an event for each class either in a time block, or the All Day feature. (We have a rotating schedule, so I use the time blocks.)

Ultimately, you can post individual calendars on each class website, send the link to your students, or just keep it for yourself. Think of the calendar as a box of links. Since we rarely have a week go exactly the way we planned, the greatest advantage to using the Google Calendar is that teachers are able to drag the events (lessons) to new dates, copy them to other calendars (classes), or duplicate.

Want to chat about using this Google tool? Come to the next Coffee CUE in Redlands! Check for the latest details at: http://tinyurl.com/iacoffeecue  or Twitter #coffeecue (IACUE).