Adding multiple events to Google Calendar using a spreadsheet

Adding individual events to a Google Calendar can be annoying and time consuming. But there's a super easy way!

Using a simple spreadsheet in the form of a CSV file you can upload as many events at one time into any of the calendars that you manage. 

There is one big warning! Be careful when you set it up as there are only two ways to delete the events you put in, either delete the whole calendar or delete the events one at a time. In that regard I'd advise adding a new calendar to house all of your new events, or at least test the file in a temporary "Test Calendar".

Click here to download a copy of the CSV file

These are the basic instructions, there is also a step by step YouTube instruction video below.

1. create a spreadsheet with the correct headers (as per example)
2. export as a .csv file
3. Go into calendar and click on the arrow next to My Calendars and click on Settings
4. at the end of the list of your own calendars, click on 'Import Calendar'
5. Choose the .csv file you created and choose the calendar it goes into and 'Import'

There is a second video at the bottom of this post that shows you how to set up the spreadsheet to accommodate multi day timetables (like a 6 day cycle) that don't stick to the days of the week. 

Hopefully this will save you quite a lot of time!

The Awesome Fast Report Starter Spreadsheet!

It's that time of year again when teachers need to write reports. When I was in the classroom I always had trouble getting started, so I created the "Awesome Fast Report Starter Spreadsheet"

Click here to get a copy of the "Awesome Fast Report Starter Spreadsheet"

It uses just a few basic functions to compile together, the Vlookup function which searches for information in another table based on a value existing, Concatenate which joins text together, and Substitute which swaps out the wildcard ### for the student's name.

This is a great way to get started on your reports, and a practical way to use spreadsheets to get started with your reports. As a disclaimer putting in high, medium and low comments is not the end of my report writing. Once I have my spreadsheet start I then go and edit the prepared comment, adding personal examples, next steps, pronouns and other individual feedback.

If you find this useful I'd love to hear back from you either on this blog or via twitter where you can find me @shaunyk .

60 seconds to save an hour

Sometimes it's the little things that make the biggest difference. For me this is particularly so with keyboard shortcuts. They have become so much a part of my workflow that I often forget which menu the commands come from when I try to show someone with the mouse.

To help people get started with some of these little tips and tricks I have started to put together some 60 second videos explaining how these work.

Once you get underway with keyboard shortcuts there's no looking back, you really will save yourself many hours for the sake of letting your fingers control the action for a moment.

If there's an instructional video you'd find useful message me and see if I can put one together for you.

Printing Multiple Documents in Google Docs

Ever have to print multiple documents in Google Docs and wish that there was a faster way?

Well there is, this is a simple workaround to help you be more productive when printing from Google docs. Because there is a step involving converting to a PDF some formatting may be affected, but for the most part this is a great solution.

Step 1: Select all the files to print 

You can do this one by one, or if you have all the files in one folder you can select them all by using the check box at the very top of the list next to where it says "title" in Drive. Go to the "More" button and click on download.

Step 2: Download the files as a PDF document

At the next window you need to tell google docs to convert the files to PDFs. When you press download, it will process the files and then automatically download them all as one zip file.

Step 3: Unzip and open all the PDFs in Preview

Go to your downloads folder and find the zip file. You can move it to your desktop if that helps you to keep track of the files. When you double click on the zip file, it will create a new folder with the same name as the zip file, and place all of the files in there.

Step 4: Print from Preview

Highlight all the files, right click and go to "Open with" and select "Preview". If preview is your default viewer you can just press ⌘ - O to open them. When you print the files (⌘ - P) you will see in the page count under the preview that it is printing all of the PDF files that were opened.

Although there are quite a few steps in this process, once you've done it once or twice it becomes straightforward, and it's much, much faster than opening and printing documents one at a time!

If you have any questions about the process, feel free to email me.

Posting to Blogger via Email

Posting to Blogger is a very easy process, but how great would it be if you could simply email directly to your blog? And what about if you're sending the same post to multiple blogs, this could really save you a heap of time and switching between accounts.

If you want detailed instructions to set this up, you can look at the google support site linked here:

http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41452

Or you can follow these steps.

The first thing you need to do is go into the settings section of your blog this is the page pictured below. 

Once you click on settings, you need to then click on mobile and email.

About halfway down you will see "Posting using email". To start using this feature, you just need to fill in the "secretwords" box with something you will remember.

This will create the email address that you send your posts to. If my secret word was dog in this example the email address I would send posts to would be

skirkwood1.dog@blogger.com

Once you have your secret word in you need to press "Save Settings!" that's the most important part.

After you've done that, all you need to do is write your post. The email subject becomes your post title, and the body is the body of your post. You can even put images into your email and they will be added to the post as well.

Unfortunately you can't add labels onto your post when you email it in, but you can add them easily later on.

If you have any questions about this process please get in touch.

Have fun with this,

Shaun

Automatically making your Goals and Strengths Sheets

With Strengths and Goals coming up, this blog post describes a method that you can use to automatically create a Strengths and Goals document for each student in your class.

I have shared the documents that you need in the 2nd grade shared folder under Strengths and Goals. This process requires using a document template and a spreadsheet. If you have difficulty following along with the video, I would recommend replaying short sections of it, to see if it makes more sense the second time around.

Click here to see in a larger format in YouTube