Waffle Bytes

From The National Weather Service (part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) - Did you know that the National Weather Service can visit your classroom and talk with your students via the Internet? The NWS National School Outreach team is ready to teach and answer your students weather questions. Whether it is learning about weather basis, severe weather, or any other topic the teacher needs covered the NWS, through Google Hangouts or Skype, jumps into the classroom to help teach these topics to Elementary through High School students. How does it work? All your classroom needs to participate is an internet connection and a webcam with a microphone. With this setup your class, or multiple classrooms across your school district, or across the country can participate at once! You can use either Google Hangouts, a free video chat interface that work with any web browser, or the Skype video chat application. The setup is easy: either clicking a link from Go...

There are times you want to email those you have invited to an event.  Or even times you want to email SOME of those you have invited.  Instead of doing this in mail, you have the ability to do it right within the event on your calendar.  It's quick, flexible, and can save you a lot of time, so is worth checking out if you haven't used it before! (Here is a video on How to Email Guests that are Invited to an Event. ) When in your Google Calendar: Click on the event you wish to email out from -  Click on the Mail icon in the upper right of the event -  A window pops up for you to craft your email in. You have the following options: Select a subgroup to send the message to (leaving all checked sends to all & cc's you) You can take off specific people, OR add people not invited to the event Copy the email addresses to the clipboard to use elsewhere Compose your message Note that the "event information will be included in the message...

Scheduling an event can be difficult. However, Google Calendar does have several features to try to make this a little less painful...and a little less than 30 emails to create.  One of these is the Suggested Times feature.  This will suggest open time slots of the duration you want for all those invited to your event.  A couple items of note with this features: it works best if everyone has established their working hours.  (Check out this previous post in how to do that if you need to.) it works best if you have viewing rights to the calendars of everyone you are inviting.  For example, for me - it makes scheduling within my own organization easier as we have the ability to at least see free/busy time for everyone's calendar.   (Here is a video on How to Use the Suggested Times Feature .) To use this features, first open or create the event on your calendar.  Make sure to go into More options so you see the full event details - ...

One of the powers of a digital calendar is that you can "share" events with other people - this means that all the information you put in the event is shared with them, from location and times to attachments and notes.  The bigger advantage of it, though, is that if you make changes to the event those changes are reflected on the other guests calendar as well!  No more emailing back and forth to ensure everyone has the most up-to-date information about an event.  (Here is a video on how to invite others to your event if you prefer.) To add guest, first either create a new event (or open an existing event).  Look on the right side for the area where Guests are managed - In the bar that says Add guests, begin typing the name or email address of the person you want to invite.  (If they are in your contacts, it will begin popping up suggestions.) - Select the person you want to add by clicking on their name (or typing in their entire email address)....