Buses are rolling in some parts of the country and will soon roll everywhere. A new year is here, a year full of promise, and full of events. Keeping up with those events can be a challenge. Technology can make it a little easier.

Does your school (or your child’s teacher) use a Google Calendar to publicize the events for the year? It’s easy to embed a Google calendar on a school website or blog.

Since Google calendar is so popular, it is likely the school or individual teachers are doing exactly that. It’s also likely you use Google Calendar to keep yourself organized.

Around the country, well-intended parents will be referring to the school’s Google Calendar as they key events into their own calendars. If this describes you, STOP! There’s an easier way.

Subscribe to a Google Calendar

With a couple of keystrokes, you can have the school events appear on your own Google Calendar. It’s called “subscribing.” Here’s how you can subscribe to a Google Calendar:

1. Be sure you are logged into your own Google account.
2. Go to the school calendar of interest. (It must be a Google Calendar.)
3. See the button in the lower-right corner of the calendar? Click it.
4. You will see the following question. Answer “Yes.”

 

Congratulations! You have now “subscribed” to that calendar! So what exactly does that mean?

Go back to your own Google Calendar. If you look on the left-hand side of that calendar, you will see another calendar, in its own color, is now added. All of the events on that calendar now appear on your Google Calendar in that color.

Click on an event. If the school has added any details, those details will be present on your calendar. It gets better! If the school adds an event, that event shows up on your calendar. If the school changes an event, the event is changed on your calendar.

What if you have two children who go to different schools? If both schools have a Google Calendar, subscribe to both of them. Each calendar shows up in its own color.

What If I Don’t Want the Whole Calendar?

Perhaps you don’t want to subscribe to the entire calendar, but you do see events you wish to add. Go to the school calendar. Click on the event. A box will open displaying a link you can click to add that one event to your Google Calendar.

If your school included any details about the event, those appear on your calendar. However, if the school makes a change to the event, the event will not update on your calendar.

Churches, Clubs, and Civic Organizations

The techniques we discussed here are not just for schools. Churches, clubs, and civic organizations maintain event calendars. If they publish these calendars, others will be able to subscribe to them as well.

We sometimes feel we have too much going on to keep up with it all. Mastering free tools, such as Google Calendar, is an easy way to put technology to work for us.

Does your school or other organization use a Google Calendar to schedule events? Do you already subscribe to a Google Calendar? What other tricks have you used to make Google calendar work for you?