Dearborn Public Schools
A change to Google Calendar has taken place. This moves booked rooms from the location field to the Guest area.
In the example above, which is heavily redacted, the room being booked is at ASC. Notice that the location field is empty, but ASC-1-Room 8 (30) shows up under the Guests.
Starting today, we are making the new Google Calendar available. This is an optional update at this time. You will need to click a blue button in the top right hand side of the calendar to upgrade. The new Google Calendar brings with it some nice features:
Google has some helpful information on the new calendar:
We hope that you find the new Google Calendar even more useful.
Every once in a while, life provides opportunities to test our patience, our learning and our trouble shooting skills. We’ve discovered another of these opportunities.
Essentially, we had a database file go asunder. This file syncs with our Google Groups. We were able to locate the database and recreate it. The file sync was rerun. However, the groups ended up being recreated.
The end result of this is that the groups are now “new”. They have the same names. They have the same individuals in them. However, they now have new identifier numbers. These new identifier numbers are crucial.
Calendar Items and Documents that are shared will most likely need to be shared again.
The exceptions are calendars and documents that are public. These will remain public. We have put some additional procedures in place so that we can maintain the same identifiers should this ever happen again.
Until our next learning opportunity…
Please note that if you have updated to iOS 9, there is a calendar issue with Google Calendar. The issue involves items created on an iOS device. The new events will NOT sync to the Google Calendar. The fix is relatively simple. Follow the directions below.
On your iOS device, go to Settings:
1. Settings > Mail, Contact, Calendars > Scroll down to CALENDARS section
2. Under “Sync” change it to All Events
We are investigating if you can change the setting back to Sync “1 month” or not.
One great feature of Google Calendar is the ability to create Appointment slots. This allows a user to create a block of time and then allow individuals to “sign up” for a appointment during that time frame. For example, if a teacher wants to have students sign up to discuss a project, the teacher can create 10 minutes time slots during an hour long period. Students can then pick a 10 minute “slot”. When the student signs up, it will go on their calendar and the teacher calendar.
This process is very simple and straight forward. We’ve completed a HelpSheet to provide specific instructions.
Here are a couple of other potential uses:
I’m sure that there are more, but the wonderful staff at Dearborn Public Schools will find them.
Enjoy.