Here's the thing, I'm an organized person. So you'd think that I would love these online productivity tools, but it's taking me awhile to embrace them. My soon to be legally-wed-to-me love and I have a shared Google calendar. It's nice to be able to see things that are going on in our busy lives; I just hate feeling so tied to a computer. There's a certain beauty to pulling out my paper planner/calendar, quick and easy access whenever needed. But that was also when it was just me. Now, there are more calendars to consult. Maybe I need to pony up and buy an Iphone or similar device and service plan that allows me 24/7 access to all these online planning tools, but at the same time, I do enjoy being unplugged several hours of the day! 
The project management tools are neat, but again, it's my love/hate thing with them. I couldn't register at The Knot because the sheer idea of having a wedding day countdown appear each time I logged caused great stress. Since I am good (well, atleast in my opinion) at managing my time, I wouldn't care to have a countdown clock for projects. At the same time, I can see where such a thing would be useful for group projects.At Remember the Milk I created at to-do list for tomorrow. It was irritating to ahve to set a due date for each item and to have to manually enter a date. Clicking on the calendar icon did not bring up a calendar. I can see the usefulness of such a product, but in my luddite ways, really do like putting things on a post-it and then crossing them off as I go. And now Mike, before you go and suggest that I look at Stikkit, you should know that I did. It seems to have lots of similar features to Outlook (meeting planning, notes, etc.), but perhaps is intended for people in the broader community.
The ideas and sites listed here warrant some more investigation and perhaps an article in the parent newsletter this fall about student use of online planning/calendar tools.
3 comments:
Cathy tried using Google Calendar this year for the labs at SVMS. I think it worked pretty well.
You may want to consider that option for this fall. Then staff (including those of us from other buildings ;-)) wouldn't need to go to the binder to see if a lab is available.
We've contemplated using an online calendar. Rick H. has set up the calendars for the World Language lab in Outlook. The main reason we stick with the binders is to have the human interaction with people--when they sign up, it gives us a chance to check in with them about their needs, what we can help with, remind them about print materials, etc.
I have tried to do a shared calendar with some people and they responded the same way you did. They like the paper form and don't want to be tied to a computer. How are they suppose to check their calendar on a vacation drive? Without a computer or some access to the web, how can they do quick additions and edits? All of these are legit issues.
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