Remote lessons for the whole school: a surprisingly easy way to schedule using Google Calendar

The Coronavirus pandemic has shifted the way schools offer their curriculum. Many schools have switched to having students log into online classes and remote video conferencing type lessons as a way to avoid physical contact as much as possible.

Schools have been quick to adapt and provide learning frameworks that can be accessed from home, and teachers have received accelerated training to use new and existing technology to make it work. This post recognizes some of the issues that schools, teachers, parents, and students have been having, and offers a simple solution that could make things a little easier.

Some issues with remote video lessons

1. Students don’t know when the lessons are
2. Students don’t know which video link to use
3. Parents are confused about how to help their children
4. Teachers are confused about technology
5. Teachers aren’t sure what students are seeing
6. Documents and links are everywhere (ugh!)

If your school uses G Suite for Education, it is easy to manage this

While there are lots of other issues, if your school uses the G Suite for Education (Google) and students have an email associated with your school, the following can help solve scheduling issues by making things available through Calendar events create single lesson links.

The end result: A single student calendar with calendar items, links, and content by multiple teachers

Students can go to their school Google Calendar, and lessons and links from each teacher will be in each calendar item

Instructions for each teacher

Goal: set up a single meeting link for your class

What this allows
Once you set this up, every student will have access to a single link placed into their school calendar for every lesson time. There will be no confusion about which meeting they need to go to.

What is required

• Good labeling of classes
• Adding the correct student to your calendar item
• Connecting calendar items to the correct class in Google Classroom

Steps

1. Open Google Calendar
2. Click on first lesson date and go to ‘more options’
3. Enter time and GOOD CLASS LABEL
4. Enter recurrence conditions
5. Enable Hangouts Meet
6. Add student emails, then press ‘Enter’
7. Select correct class calendar
8. Save
9. Adjust class times/days manually as needed.

1. Open Google Calendar

• Go to https://calendar.google.com/
• Switch to school account on top right
• You can switch to different time views (Day, Week, Month, etc.)

2. Click on first lesson date and go to ‘More options’

• Go to a calendar day which is the first lesson day
• Without entering anything, click on ‘More options’

3. Enter time and GOOD CLASS LABEL

• Enter suitable class label at top
• Uncheck “All day”
• Enter start time and end time for that day

4. Enter recurrence conditions

• Open drop down next to ‘All day”
• Select custom (or whatever works)
• Enter recurrence
• If your class time is different for certain days, we will adjust later. Set up recurrence anyway.

5. Enable Hangouts Meet (or add whatever video conferencing link)

• Select ‘Add conferencing’
• Select ‘Hangouts Meet’
• Then a meeting link will be added to this calendar

6. Add student emails, then press ‘Enter’

• Go to Guests
• Type in student email
• If a dropdown appears, select the student
• If no dropdown appears, then enter full email and PRESS ENTER
• Repeat until all students are there

7. Select correct class calendar

• Go to calendar dropdown just below ‘add notification’
• Select correct class on dropdown (this should be the class you use for Google Classroom)

8. Save (no need to notify)

• Save calendar item
• Select ‘Don’t send’ for invitation emails to go out to your students

See the added items

• You will see recurring calendar items.
• THE SAME WILL APPEAR ON YOUR STUDENTS’ CALENDAR
• How you label affects what they see when there are other classes by other teachers

Click on item and see meeting link

• Click on the calendar meeting
• You will find the ‘Join Hangouts Meet’ link (as will your students)
• The meeting link will be the same for every meeting for this recurring set

9a. Manually adjust times/dates (part 1)

• Switch to Week view
• Click on calendar item to edit

9b. Manually adjust times/dates (part 2)

• Click on an item to edit
• Edit
• Change date or start/end times
• Save
• Manually do for all others (tedious)

The rationale for manual editing

• The point of editing dates/times is that the calendar/meeting link will be the same
• You can create individual calendar sets but the meeting links will be different
• Also, if you want to do a mass edit (like adding a zoom meeting link), it can be applied to all recurring lessons.
• Basically, it is up to the teacher how it’s done.

You’re done! But there is one more thing

When you open the meeting link, you set mic/camera to on/off and then join.
You can join via browser, but you can join via mobile app too (but you need to download an app and may need to set up a workspace)

Copy link and paste to Classroom Stream if needed

• Copy link
• Post link to Classroom stream, or add as a link (makes it look more prominent).

Leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions!

That’s all, folks.