Google Notes from CUE - Calendar and Google Apps

Google App Update!
For lots of great resources on Google Apps, see the materials posted by Kern Kelly at the Google Teacher Academy for Administrators: http://sites.google.com/site/gtaresources/events/2010-03-05/apps

This is Part 4 of my notes from the day-long Advanced Google Workshop for Educators at CUE 2010.  Part 1 of the workshop covered Google Search.  Part 2 covered Google Docs Spreadsheets and Forms. Part 3 covered Maps, Earth, SketchUp and Sites.

It was an exhausting eight hours at the Hilton, but I'm glad I did it.  Without the structure and context of one of these sessions, I doubt I would have been stimulated enough to find out about all these neat Google tricks and how they might be used in our school.  If you need a boot camp survey of a lot of technology I think these guys--@brumbaugh, @k_shelton, and @dowbiggin--do a really good job.

Google Calendar Stuff

• New feature - attach Google Doc to event.  Use this for agenda, etc.
• Create a calendar for each department, school, activity group, etc.  Aggregate them into a single calendar.
• I just found out how to do something I have been wanting to do - build an embed code that will show multiple calendars - in the Google Calendar How Do I? discussion.  Kyle covered it as well!
• Hook calendar alert to dedicated Gmail account.  Gmail account inbox filter forwards to TweetByMail.

Managing Google Apps Accounts

• To set up student accounts in bulk, generate a CSV file with Last Name, First Name, Graduation Year, Student ID for each student.  Build up the username like this:
• Grad Year
• Last Name
• First Initial
• Last 2 digits of student ID added in case of username collision
• Example: "2012smithj03". Then import into Apps.  This username schema makes it easy to remove stale accounts after graduation.  Suspend accounts first, then delete about a year after graduation.
• Use same domain for students and staff, staff usernames don't have the prefix.
• Set up groups for each class section.
• Let students self-sign up for class section groups - don't need to force this on teachers or tech staff.