An online school calendar can be very beneficial for a school, parents, and students. Here are 5 things you may not know that online school calendars can do.

1. Subscribe to an RSS feed

Online school calendars can have an RSS feed which will allow you to receive updates in any RSS feed reader such as Google Reader, MyYahoo, Bloglines, etc.

2. Sync your personal calendar with school events

Chances are that you use some type of online calendar or desktop based calendar client like Outlook. Wouldn’t it be great if you could automatically populate the calendar you already use with important school events? Additionally, with Tandem for Schools, if you are only interested in the High School Varsity Soccer schedule, you can filter and sync only these events to your calendar.

3. Get automatic email updates and reminders

You can request to receive an email if there are any changes to an event. In Tandem you would click on the event on the calendar and when the details come up you would click on “Email Me Updates”. You can also click on “Set Reminder” to receive an email reminder before an event.

4. Reserve a facility for a event or meeting

If you are a coach, club leader, PTSA leader, ect, you can request a school facility for an event. Once the calendar manager approves the request you will have the room or gym reserved. Tandem for Schools automatically ensures that another party doesn’t book the same facility at the same time. Also, school facilities could be better utilized by the community and the school could even raise money by renting out facilities.

5. Create a custom personal school calendar

You may not be interested in all the groups at the school. Tandem for Schools makes it easy to create a custom calendar that tracks only the groups that you are interested in. For instance if a parent has a child that participates in soccer and jazz band, and they want to be involved in the PTSA, they can create a custom calendar with only events from those groups.

1. Save Paper/Reduce Carbon Footprint
A school can be more environmentally friendly by not printing out all their school calendars for all the students or printing out reminder fliers for upcoming events. Instead by directing everyone to the online school calendar, students and parents can get all the school event information in one place and schools can reduce their carbon footprint.

2. Save Time for School Administrators
Creating a paper school calendar can be very time consuming. A school can have over a hundred different groups, including clubs and sports teams. To create a central school calendar means organizing all the different groups into one calendar and working out time conflicts. When you think you’re done, a group may need to make a change, which can mean reworking the entire calendar. Sometimes a group may try to request an event in a facility that has already been reserved by another group and you are required to play phone or email tag to get the conflict resolved.

An online school calendar like Tandem streamlines the event management process. Groups can submit requests to add events, and the administrator can accept or reject with a click of the mouse. The software automatically checks for schedule conflicts before an event is added to the schedule.

3. Reduce Phone Calls to the School
One labor cost that schools often face is calls from parents, due to uncertainty about the school schedule. They may want clarification on when school will start on a given day, or the time of early dismissal. They may call to see if a baseball game has been rained out, or for the place of that days sporting event. These types of calls can be reduced by having an online school calendar that parents can access for answers to these simple questions. Often Tandem users inform us that setting up an online school calendar has greatly reduced the number of calls to the office.

4. More Effective School to Parent Communication
When a paper school calendar is sent out to parents, they may post in on their fridge or it may get lost. If they lose the paper or do not receive it, they are often left in the dark. Usually a paper calendar is good for informing parents about school vacations, but little else. A paper calendar can not alert the parent when an event has been rescheduled.

In contrast, an online school calendar is a living document. Parents can access the most up to date version of the school calendar in minutes. When changes are made to the time or place of an event, it is reflected to the online calendar as soon as it is posted. With Tandem, the school events can be synced with the parent’s Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, or Cozi, so events will show up in their work or personal calendar as well. An online school calendar is much more convenient for parents, and provides them with instant information that they need.

5. More Effective School to Student Communication
Students also want information about what is going on at the school, both during school hours and after. An online school calendar is a great source of information on events that students want to be involved in. They can also learn about clubs that they might otherwise not know about, but would like to join to build their college resume and make new friends.

Tandem also provides a feature to where students can post pictures and news about school events and groups. This feature can be used by students to share photos and news with peers, like the math club hoisting the first place trophy or the stats of last Friday’s football game.

1. Makes information on school events more accessible for students.
Schools have tons of extra-curricular clubs and yet it can be difficult to get the word out that these clubs exist. If schools publish all their school events on a online calendar like Tandem for Schools, it will help students find out about the extra-curricular groups that they can get involved with. This can help them be more involved with school activities and also pad their resumes for college.

2. Makes information on school events more accessible for parents.
Parent involvement is critical to the success of students and an online calendar encourages parents to be more involved with school events. An online school calendar effectively communicates the when and where for school activities and events, which makes it easier for parents to participate.

3. Alerts students and parents of time critical information.
One of the interesting features of Tandem for Schools is that it allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed, or sync the school calendar with your main personal calendar like iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar, or Cozi. When there is a change to the game time or a school delay due to weather, school administrators can make changes to the school’s calendar which will be immediately reflected on the online calendar as well as get distributed to parent calendars and RSS feeds.

4. Go Green
Printing paper calendars for every student and staff can consume a lot of paper and ink. Also paper calendars often become outdated as soon as they are printed because there will inevitably be changes to scheduled events, which leads to more paper being used to notify everyone. Going digital can save many, many trees.

Try our full version online school calendar free for 30 days, or get the free annual school calendar.

As the new school year is approaching, does your school have a printable 2010 school calendar that your staff and students can access online or print for placement on their fridge? You can get a free printable 2010 calendar for your school by signing up for the free Tandem Basic online calendar.

Once school management sets up the school calendar it will be live online so that staff, students, and parents can access it by going to a specific url (typically yourschool.intand.com). From there they can print out the annual calendar or bookmark the page for future reference. They can also sync your school’s calendar events with a personal calendar like Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, or Cozi or alternatively subscribe to the calendar RSS feed. Set up of the annual calendar is easy and takes just minutes. The public webpage is hosted on Intand’s secure servers.

Tandem Basic is much more than a static online school calendar. School management can log in to the administration panel and add new events or change dates at any time. These changes will immediately be reflected on the calendar web page and updates will also be distributed to members of the school who have subscribed to the calendar. Parent’s have often commented on the convenience of getting school updates to their personal calendar. To make it look official, you can also upload your school’s logo.

To get started with Tandem’s free 2010 printable school calendar simply register your information.

Intand was recently mentioned by Ednetnews.com for our work with Microsoft to integrate Tandem for Schools with Microsoft’s Geneva Single Sign-On, which makes it easy for students and parents to be authenticated with the user data stored on the school’s servers.

Geneva Single Sign-On is especially useful for schools that use multiple cloud-based third party applications because it provides an easy way to manage user log in permissions across multiple applications while maintaining a high level of security of personal information.

The first implementation of this in a school setting was with the Lake Washington School District who uses Tandem for Schools to manage their calendars at all of their 48 schools.

In the future Geneva Single Sign-On will allow schools to grant full access to students, staff, and parents who have been authenticated by the school. In the past this was possible but would require a school administrator to painstakingly add data manually on each individual or import data into the application. If a school uses multiple third-party applications this may require administrators to manage a separate database on each application which can be very time consuming. Geneva single sign-on will make it much easier to manage user permissions by “talking” with applications and telling them if an individual should be granted access based on student and parent data that is centrally located on the school’s server (Active Directory). This will reduce redundancies and lessen the work load of busy school administrators.

Tandem school administration software helps schools simplify school event management by allowing central control of the school’s events calendar and transportation through an easy to use browser based user interface. This has many benefits for school administrators in charge of coordinating school events.

Communicate Event Scheduling More Effectively
The school administrator in charge of planning school events can enter all the events going on at a school from Drama Club meetings to friday night football games into the online school calendar. Any student, parent, teacher, or coach can easily access information through any web browser to learn about a specific event, or filter the calendar to their specific needs. When an event time is changed by an administrator, the change will be immediately updated to the online calender.

Avoid Schedule Conflicts
It is quick and easy for administrators to add events to the school calendar through a user friendly online interface. Multiple administrators can have access to add events to the calendar and Tandem will automatically alert you if there is a scheduling conflict. No more time wasted on back and fourth paper trails to get a schedule conflict resolved. Coaches can also request facilities and the administrator can easily grant them access with a click of the mouse.

Easy to Implement
Our school administration software is hosted externally on Intand’s secure servers. That means there is no complicated software to install. Our support team can get your calendar up and running in minutes and Tandem allows you to quickly import Excel data like school groups, staff members, and competing schools. If you ever have any questions, our friendly support team will always be happy to help you help you through them.

Manage Transportation
The transportation management functionality is available with the Plus version of Tandem for Schools. It helps administrators easily request and allocate transportation for school events. Tandem’s transportation module will prevent driver conflicts and manage fuel costs.

There are many more helpful benefits of Tandem for Schools. Schedule a free 1 on 1 demo on your own computer to learn more.

Photo by Gil Searcy

Hear what several school administrators have said about our online school calendar:

The Tandem calendar not only gave parents the ability to check on upcoming events, but also gave them driving direction to out of town games. It also allowed us to schedule both our events and make reservations to our high school facility on one one calendar, which streamlined the work done by my office.

-Jeff Lunt, Assistant Principal/Athletic Director, Port Angeles High School

We’ve been using the Tandem calendar since the beginning of the 2008-09 school year and it has been a great addition to our district’s online presence. We have been able to use the RSS feeds to automatically update our main webpage with district events and will soon be extending this to the individual school web pages. I would recommend Tandem to anyone looking for a school events calendar solution.

-Brad King, Manor ISD

We have been struggling for years in keeping our schools’ calendars current. As soon as it is printed it is out of date. I have looked at several on-line calendar solutions and this is the best I have found. We have been using Tandem for about 6 months now and it has been a great hit with both parents and employees. The support staff at Tandem has been extremely helpful in assisting me with some unique issues that some companies might consider out of the scope of their product.

-Kelly Murphy, Merrilville Schools

To find out for yourself, sign up for a free 30 day demo of Tandem for Schools.

Tandem for Schools is much more than an online school calendar, it can also be used to manage school transportation and share photos and news. With the photos and news function of the calendar, anyone registered with the calendar can submit photos or news at the individual events page.

To share a photo you can upload an image by clicking on the upload photos icon on the right side of an event page. This can be a great way to share photos from events throughout the school, without having to leave the calendar website. Before a photo is published to the calendar it must first be reviewed and approved a calendar administrator. Then the photo thumbnail will appear on the event page.

You can click on the thumbnail to see a larger version of the photo or you can click on the photo icon on the top of the calendar to see all the photos that have been uploaded from the school and even view school photos in a slide show format. This can be fun for students and parents, who can see school photos online and don’t have to wait until the end of the year when the school yearbook is finally published.

Additionally students, parents, and staff can upload text updates for each event. For example a parent can upload the result of a match or student achievements at a particular event. This can be helpful in communicating the outcome of an event to the school community or spreading important information that specific groups should know. To do this, you would click on the news icon on the right side of an event page and insert the text in the appropriate field. Once the calendar administrator reviews and approves it, the content will be published on that event’s specific page.

A school office can often serve the role of customer support for the school community. When parents have questions the first option that usually comes to mind is to call the school office and ask. However, is this really the most efficient option for both parents and the school? Sometimes the questions can be very simple, like “what time does school get out today” or “is the softball game rained out?”. Although this might seem like a convenient way to get information, what about the alternative like having a central information source for the school that is available to be viewed online. Instead of having to call the school, what if parents could view the online school calendar instead? They wouldn’t have to wait on hold, which can save them time and also reduce the number of calls to the office for simple questions. For many corporations that have call centers, each call is estimated to cost as much as $20 per call or more. By reducing calls to the office, this could save money for the school or free up the school administration to focus on other tasks.

Our school calendar application, Tandem for Schools, can help your school reduce calls to the office by centralizing information at your school’s calendar website. Tandem was designed to help schools communicate effectively with parents. The calendar can be updated with the latest information almost instantly. Parents can sync a Tandem school calendar with their personal calendars like Outlook, iCal, Cozy, or Google Calendar, which will update them whenever changes are made to the school calendar. Parents can also subscribe to RSS updates with any RSS reader like MyYahoo or Google Reader. Finally, the online school calendar is available 24/7, so parents can access information at any time from anywhere that has internet access.

You can try Tandem for Schools Plus free for 30 days or use the limited free version.

If you are a parent, check out SchoolCal.org to request Tandem for your school.

You can contact Intand at info@intand.com or 1-866-685-3449.

Photo by tome213

One way to schools can raise money is by renting out their school facilities to the community. They could rent out their school gym for local recreational sports leagues or the auditorium for company meetings in the summer. Many schools rent facilities to Boy or Girl Scouts or even weddings. However a paper-based sign up process could be too time consuming for both community members and school administrators.

Tandem for Schools provides a streamlined process for facilities requests that is completely online. A community member can fill out an online request form that is sent to the administrator in charge of facilities rentals. They can approve or deny the request and the requester will be notified via email. Once approved the rental time slot will be scheduled on the school calendar, to automatically prevent any double booking of that facility. A handful of event bookings can potentially pay for a year of Tandem for Schools and can start generating a positive cash flow that many schools desperately need right now.

Sign up for a free demo to learn more.

Photo by Heated Ground Photography