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Calendar Schmalendar: Finding the Perfect Calendar Solution for Schools is Impossible
November 17, 2009 | Tagged calendar, Calendar Maker, FirstClass, Google, Rjenda, schedules, webevent | 1 Comment
Among the topics sure to crop up in the listservs I frequent (BAISNET and ISED-L), as well as various Nings, blogs, and wikis is that of calendars. A composite inquiry of all the things people are looking for in a school calendaring system might look something like this:
I suspect we have talked about this before, but we’re looking for a new calendaring program that:
- will easily schedule resources, meetings, and parent conferences
- will automatically find open meeting times & reserve needed resources
- is cross-platform, and web based
- will automatically adjust to schedule changes as they are made
- will send meeting changes and to-do list reminders via email, SMS, or Twitter
- will allow for meeting agenda and other documents to be attached to in the invitation
- is very user friendly
- is available 24 x 7 x 365
- supports a variety devices both online and off-line, with automatic synchronization
- has flexible, easy to use security, with various levels of permissions to allow access to certain events by role
- is compatible with ical and other web calendaring standards
- prints a range of attractive, easy-to-read formats
- allows for secure access by administrative assistants
- allows for easy analysis of meeting and task loads and responsibilities by individuals and groups, and FINALLY
- is free, with high quality technical support and, low maintenance, and requested features added in a timely manner.
Aah. The holy grail of calendars. A fortune awaits the company that can create one, though point #15 suggests it will be a very, very small fortune.
Over my career, I have tried a range of calendaring solutions in search of the perfect system, including Meeting Maker, Outlook, FirstClass, CalendarMaker, Web Event, Google Calendar, and iCal. In some ways these are all great programs. But in some fundamental way, each of them also sucked.
The companies that make calendaring software focus their products on individuals and businesses. Schools are a secondary market, and they don’t understand us.
To start with, schools operate in two different time spheres: (a) the time observed by the rest of the world and (b) school time. School time is normally meant to be class periods. Such as a period 1, period 2, period 3, or period A, 1A, nap time, math time, reading time, block 1, block 2, and so on. No one outside of the school has any idea how these times correlate to real world time, and even those inside of schools often have to rely on cheat sheets to make the translation. Think of these different time spheres as our equivalent of the metric versus the English measurement system.
So right out of the starting gate calendaring programs made for the real (metric) world are incompatible with time as observed in the school world.
But wait, computers are smart. Can’t they bridge the gap? A computer can instantly convert metric to English units and back in measurement, why can’t a computer convert between different time spheres?
Computers could do this of course. But there’s this niggling little problem of no two schools using exactly the same class schedule. Plus schedules change, often by the day of the week—and let’s not forget special schedules that are used for planned events such as assemblies and sports, or unplanned events such as school closings or late starts do to weather.
So now the problem has become much more complex, because you must allow the end user to be able to enter the information peculiar to their school’s schedule, with the ability for it to be instantly updated, with these updates recalculating real-world time, checking for conflicts with people’s schedules and resources, and then synchronizing across devices.
It’s enough to make even a Google engineer weep.
Schools are not likely to change to real-world time anytime soon (pun intended). This leaves us at the mercy of benevolent calendar makers who will listen to our plea and come to our aid. If I had to bet on who that might be, I would lay my money on Google (who has a burgeoning number of K-12 schools using their Google Apps for Education) or Rjenda (a new company that has taken assessment calendaring to a new high).
I’m curious to know what readers may think not only of the list of 15 requirement for school calendars that I listed above, but also what solutions you have found that work best for you.
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