Juggling school with lots of other things? As much as dayplanners are nifty and sometimes even free, sometimes you lose them and other times you leave at home when you need it most! Google Calendar gets rid of these conundrums with its free, online, shareable calendar service provided by Google.
What do you need to get one? An internet connection and a Google account. Yes, that’s it.
Let’s explore this a little more …
What are features? Loads! The following is not an exhaustive list but it will probably give you a good idea of the conveniences this tool offers. With Google Calendar you can:
- Access it anytime, anywhere
- Put in all your appointments, due dates, extra-curricular activities and even that helpful reminder to get more milk
- Organize and promote your organization’s or community’s events
- Share the calendar with others
- View your events through daily, weekly, monthly and agenda views to stay on top of everything you’re juggling
- Sync it with your Droid, Windows Outlook, Blackberry or ICal
- It’s free (yeah I mentioned this already … but hey, free is always nice!)
What do you need to get Google Calendar? It’s pretty simple!
1. Go to google.ca. No account? Click “ Sign in ” and then “ Create an account now ” to set up your new account. If you already have a Google or gmail account, sign in .
2. From the top left menu, choose “Calendar”. If you don’t see it select it from the drop-down menu called “More”.
3. Look at “My Calendars” in the left column menu. You should have only one right now.
4. You can distinguish your tasks (say tasks for courses, housework, social activities, work, etc) by clicking on the “Add” button at the bottom of the “My Calendars” box. The task categories are called “Calendars” in Google. (Think of it as each “Calendar” = a particular task category. In other words, a “school” calendar is for tasks related to school).
- To make each task category stand out, scroll over the downward arrow beside the calendar name and select a colour. You can then easily differentiate the tasks for courses say, from housework or miscellaneous tasks.
5. To organize your daily timetable, click on “Day” at the top right. In the centre window, find the day of one of your courses. Click on the start time of the class and click once. In the pop-up window, type the name of the course into the “What” field. Use the drop-down menu to change the calendar to “classes” (to make it easy to see you have school that day). Then click the “Create Event” button.
6. Is your class longer than 1 hour? You can either:
- Write the start and end time in the pop-up window (see #5) after you click “Create Event”. It automatically defaults to one hour so if you’re class is longer, indicate start and end time.
- Hover the cursor over “=” sign at the bottom until the double-headed arrow appears and drag the window down to the class end time.
7. Under “Calendar” scroll down and select the task category this event would be grouped in. Click the title of the task category (if you’re confused about this, see #4).
8. On the edit screen, in the “repeats” drop-down menu, change it from “does not repeat” to whichever schedule option matches your class. Is your class every Mon, Weds, Fri? Tues/Thurs? Weekly?
9. In the Range section, click “until” and choose the last day of classes for the term.
10. Add the classroom number to the “Where” field.
11. Click “Save” at the top.
12. You should now be able to see your class repeating throughout your calendar! Repeat for your other classes.
13. Check out the email reminders section in the event details window. If you decide to include something like due dates, you can have Google Calendar email you a reminder ahead of the date so you don’t forget!