Outlook Calendar

This post is the third in a series of posts about digital calendars and using them. This time, we’ll focus on Outlook’s calendar functionality.

In our district, students do not use MS, O365 or Outlook as their learning platforms, so I am going to strictly look at how educators can use Outlook’s calendar.

Even though I use Google for most of my work, I do use the calendar in Outlook as my main digital calendar, strictly because it is right there as a part of my email so it’s easy to use.

I use the version of Outlook that can be accessed by going to the district website and logging in to my account, rather than the version that lives on my device. They look a little different but the functionalities are basically the same.

This video covers all of the basics you would likely need. Notice that the video is broken down into “chapters”. Here is a screenshot of the chapters and when each one starts:

Like Google Calendar, Outlook’s calendar is functional. It works and it works well but it’s pretty boring. 

If you want something more “fun” looking, there are loads of online planners and schedulers you could use. The only proviso I would add is to remember not to put anything personally identifiable into them (marks, names, contact info of students or families). Oh yeah….one last thing. Beware of free. There is usually a reason something is free and often it is because they are collecting data from you, so dig into terms of use before you go free.

Next week….a total change of pace!

Introducing Google Calendar

So, you know how to use Google Classroom, you are familiar with your Google Drive, Slides makes sense and you’ve even dabbled with Sheets. Awesome! But have you played with Google Calendar? Better yet, have you helped your students see how using Google Calendar can help them stay on top of their school work?

Calendar is one of those applications that seems and looks simple but can actually do quite a lot, so let’s dive in!

Everyone who has a Google account has a calendar. The easiest way to find it is to look for the waffle (or go to calendar.google.com). Your students all have one, too!

 When you create a Google Classroom, Google automagically creates a calendar that goes with it. Even cooler, when you create an assignment in Classroom, Google adds it to the calendar for that Class AND it adds the event to the students’ calendar, too!

Students with more than one teacher can see all of those teacher’s classroom calendars in the same place, right here. Talk about an easy way to keep track of homework!

If you then show kids how to add events on their own and colour code them or add details, you’ve given them some great digital literacy skills, not to mention executive functioning skills!

Can Google Calendar create To Do Lists? You bet – here’s how. You can check off tasks as you do them and switch back and forth between calendar view and task view!

What if you, as a teacher, want to create time slots for appointments with parents or kids? Can do! Just follow the directions here.

Finally, you can create as many calendars as you like. Here you can see that I have made separate calendars for each of the district academies. By clicking on the box beside each calendar, I can “turn on” or “turn off” as many as I like. I can change the colours of the calendars and, if I go into the settings, I can share the calendar with other people.

As you can see, Google Calendar is a useful tool for both teachers and students!

Calendars.

When I was a beginning teacher I excitedly looked forward to creating my yearly teacher planner and choosing a fun, class -friendly calendar that I would post in my room near my desk. In my planner, I would proudly write down staff meetings, field trips, Pro-d days and holidays in different coloured pens and add stickers. My students and I would use the calendar to count down days to exciting events – it was all great fun!

Now my job is a lot more complicated and my brain (perhaps) a little less capable of keeping track of all the dates, meetings and deadlines I need to remember. I don’t have time for the cute stickers and coloured pens. I just need to get the job done in the most efficient way possible! So….I use a digital calendar. Many teachers do. Some students do. But many of us do not know the power of the calendars we use…so I thought I would write a few blog posts about digital calendars and how teachers and students can make better use of them!

First off, in my district teachers have access to the calendar that comes with Outlook and teachers and students also have access to Google Calendar.

Now, I do not want to have to keep and update two calendars, so which should I use? If I were still in the classroom, I would stick with the Google calendar. But since most of what I add to my calendar these days is appointments and meetings, not assignments, I generally stick to the Outlook calendar.

What if I want to combine them? Well, what I found after several hours of playing was….I could move a “snapshot” of one calendar over to the other but anything new that got added required me to add a new snapshot. Waste of my time but I guess I was dreaming to think that I could successfully get two rivals to play well together, right?  

According to my research, there are ways to do it using another app, but I’d have to pay money (not doing it) and/or trust an app I don’t know much about with potentially sensitive data, like the timing of IEP meetings, etc (also not doing this). So, my conclusion is, pick the one you feel you live in the most and make that your calendar. Get used to adding things from the other one occasionally. Sigh. For me, that’s going to be Outlook. Again, if I were still in the classroom, I would likely choose Google.

So, next week I will focus on Google. I’ll look at some tips and tricks for using it as well as talk about how we should be encouraging our students to use a calendar for planning and homework. The week after that I’ll focus on Outlook.

And now that I’m totally frustrated with not being able to do what I wanted to do, I’m going to get out my coloured pens and stickers and play for a bit. Maybe I’ll plan my next vacation? See ya next week!

What You Say Is What You See!

I enjoy drawing but I have to be brutally honest and say that my drawings rarely turn out as spectacular on the page as they are in my head. If only I could use my words and magically describe what I want my paintbrush or pencils to create. I would prompt my brush to paint a lush, green tropical jungle with a small path meandering through the palm trunks and bright flowers blooming everywhere. Kind of like this:

Did I draw this? Well, not really. The words were mine but the image was created using Artificial Intelligence. Now, I don’t for a minute suggest that we start having students use AI to create their art for them. But I have seen some pretty neat uses of AI-created images lately and one of the best ones I’ve seen came from a West Vancouver Schools educator, Megan Roughley. Megan teaches a Grade 6/7 class and she has been working on using descriptive language with her students. Her challenge to them?

“Picture yourself as an architect of imagination, constructing landscapes with your descriptions. Your task is to create a prompt that summons images as vibrant as a technicolor dream, using language that dances off the page like fireflies in a summer night’s sky. 

Your prompt should include a simile, a metaphor, and sensory details.”

Megan gave them several examples and, as a final option, she told them they could load their prompt into Canva’s Magic Media Text to Image tool to see what their prompt created. Here is an example from one of her students:

I love the fact that Megan is using AI in a way that allows the students to immediately (well, in a few minutes anyways) see the results of their prompt. From there, they can choose to alter the language of the prompt to have the scene more accurately reflect their imagination.

I saw a similar exercise in the fall, where a high school teacher had students writing descriptions of Halloween monsters and then seeing what AI could generate from their prompts.

If you were working with younger students, you could have them share their prompts with you and you could load them into an AI image generator.

On a related note, Google has developed an Ai tool that gives you an image and then asks you to write a prompt that will generate a similar image. How well can you write prompts? Check out Say What You See. No sign in or username/password required!