A Very Good Google Calendar Guide for Teachers

February 24, 2016
For those of you new to Google Calendar, below is a step by step visual guide to help you learn how to create and share calendars. This is a guide we initially published in 2014 but since then thousands of teachers and educators have joined our PLNs so we thought it convenient to re-share this updated resource. We have also added some recent updates that have been added to Google Calendar.

Here is how to create a calendar on Google Calendar:

1- First head over to Google Calendar and log in. Click on the drop down menu and select " create a new calendar".

2- Give a name to your calendar, provide a short description for it and select your time zone.

3- Add attachments to your calendar

4- Add reminders to your calendar and customize the privacy settings of your calendar

5- Create an event in your calendar

6- Edit your event and add more information to it

7-Click on 'Share this calendar with others' or type in their email addresses then click on 'create calendar'

8- Embed your calendar

9- Customize the size and colour of your calendar and copy the HTML code to paste on your blog or website

Google Calendar Tips

Below are three important tips from Google Help that relate to the use of Events from Gmail, sharing calendars with a group of collaborators and customizing Calendar settings to control the visibility of your calendars and what others can do with them.

1- Events from Gmail
Any email you receive with an event included (e.g a flight, an appointment…etc) is automatically added to you Google Calendar. Gmails events added to your Calendar are only visible to you, even if you share your calendar with others they won’t be able to see them. However, if you no longer want events from Gmail added to you Calendar you can easily deactivate this feature by changing the default setting. Here is how to do it on your computer:

Open Google Calendar.
Click the settings gear in the top right .
Select Settings.
Find the Events from Gmail section (stay in the "General" tab).
Uncheck Add automatically.

2- Share Calendars with a group of people
Google Calendar allows you to create different types of calendars to which you can apply different sharing settings. For instance, you can create a calendar that multiple people can edit. This is particularly helpful when you are working on a collaborative project with co-workers. As the creator and owner of the calendar, you get the admin privileges of deciding how others can see your events. You can also control what others can do with your calendar in terms of editing and adding events to it. Some of the things you can allow collaborators to do on your calendar include: Make changes and manage sharing, Make changes to events, See all event details, and See free/busy information (no details).
Here is how to share your calendars with others and change permission settings:

Open Google Calendar on a computer.
On the left, find My Calendars. You may need to click to expand it.
Find the calendar you want to share and click the arrow next to it.
Menu on hover over calendar name
Select Share this Calendar.
Under Share with specific people, add the email address of the person you want to share with.
For Permission Settings, choose an option in the drop-down menu. Click Add person, if they aren't already added.
Click Save.

Once you click Save, the person you shared your calendar with will get an email invitation to view your calendar. If they click the link in the email, your calendar will be added to their "Other calendars" list.

3- Change the privacy settings for your event
By default, any event you create on your Calendar has the same privacy settings as your calendar. However, you do have the ability to change what others can see about any of your events. Here is how to change the privacy settings of your events: