Category Archives: Tech for Academics

Scheduling with Students: youcanbook.me

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I have used a number of different websites over the years to streamline appointment scheduling with students. Unfortunately, whenever I find something that seems to work (Tungle.me or “Google Appointments”) they end up going out of business.

So, my current implementation involves yet another niche website that I hope will last a bit longer. It also involves a set of instructions which, though lengthy, provide for a very effective synchronization with my Google Calendar.

Here is the service: http://youcanbook.me/

Here are the instructions: http://commons.trincoll.edu/jackdougherty/2012/12/16/youcanbookme/

And here is my current implementation (this is active so don’t set-up an appointment with me unless you need to!): http://michaelbnelson.youcanbook.me/

Getting Ready for Fall Teaching…

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While we still have some summer left (my vacation takes place in a couple weeks), it is often near the end of summer that many of us begin to figure out what exactly we will be doing for our Fall classes.  The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “ProfHacker” blog, has a couple useful posts on just this topic:

Course Websites: the Schedule

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Since I began teaching at Wesleyan, I’ve experimented with different ways of presenting my course syllabus and materials. I began with the standard syllabus PDF and an implementation of Blackboard. But I quickly moved onto using WordPress to make a course website. Examples from last term: International Law and Africa in World Politics.  Note the “Schedule” page on those which includes a calendar I painstakingly made.  Kevin, our IT guy, kept telling me there is an easier way to do this with Google Calendar. And seeing the post below, I believe this could definitely be the case. I just might have to try it next term.

clipped from chronicle.com

Create Your Syllabus With a Spreadsheet and a Calendar App

By George H. Williams

In my post today, I’m going to show you how to use GoogleDocs and Google Calendar to create a dynamic calendar for a course. This calendar can be displayed as a web page or embedded in a course web site. Why would you want to do this? Well, if you’re happy with using a printed syllabus only—which is perfectly fine, of course—then there’s no reason for you to try this. However, the method I explain below is useful if you’d like a little added flexibility and efficiency when updating a course syllabus from semester to semester. Plus it’s kind of nice to have an online syllabus that will always show the immediately upcoming events and assignments for your course.

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