I live by my Google Calendar. Seriously. If it wasn’t for Google Calendar, I wouldn’t remember the many important things in life. For instance, I probably wouldn’t remember when I have important meetings, or my dentist appointments, or to clean the Baby Brezza…on and on. Okay, I am sure I would remember some of these things – but life is busy!
Just as helpful, I constantly utilize Google Calendar to block out periods of time in my schedule to prevent people from scheduling meetings when I am working on something with a deadline. For instance, if I have a presentation to give and need to prep for it, I might block out a period of two hours in my calendar as “Presentation Prep”. This enables me to focus on a specific task during a given amount of time without (ideally) being interrupted.
Now here is the fun part – recently, I was introduced to the website YouCanBook.Me. With YouCanBook.Me, you can connect your Google Calendar and share times for them to schedule appointments with you.
It’s a fantastic and easy to use website. All you have to do is share the link to your calendar on YouCanBook.Me with others and they can select a time to meet with you based on your availability. Here is a short video from their YouTube channel to show you how it works:
As always, I try to bring this back to an educational focus and how we can use the technology tools in our schools. Here are a few ideas:
- Teachers could share their booking calendar with students to book appointments with them for extra support during lunch and/or after school.
- Instructional technology coaches could share their booking calendar with teachers to let them sign up for time slots to meet in-person, over the phone, or via video chat.
- Administrators could share their booking calendars with teachers to let them sign up for meetings to discuss evaluations, support that they need, or any other questions/concerns they may have about their class and students.
Obviously, the idea is similar across all educational roles – share the link to let stakeholders book appointments with you! If you haven’t checked out this helpful website, I encourage you to try it as your #OneNewThing of the week!
How do you ensure that you have time to meet with your students or staff? Share in the comments below!
I love youcanbook.me EXCEPT that now they make you pay for fixed start/end dates and they never used to. 🙁 For booking parent- teacher conferences that’s a must. Now I’m looking for something else to use that will work better to just give parents a certain block of time to book. I’m super disappointed.
I used You Can Book Me as an EdTech Coach/TOSA, it allowed my teachers to see availability without emailing back and forth a bunch of times. It also allows me to collect the information I need when they book their appointment. Now I use it in a larger capacity as I work with teachers, admin and 3rd party companies. No matter what type of calendar they use, they can book a time on mine,
We were using youcanbook.me for our parent conferences but then they started charging for start/end dates and times. We switched over to calendly.com. It works very similarly!