Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – Two Good Tools for Scheduling Parent-Teacher Conferences

We’re now at the part of the school year in which many schools are hosting parent-teacher conferences. Of course, every teacher knows that this won’t be the only time that they meet with students’ parents. When you need to schedule meetings instead of having a school secretary handle it, try Bloomz or Doodle.

Bloomz has many features for communicating with parents. My favorite feature is the conference scheduling too. In my Bloomz account, as the teacher I can set days and times that I will be available for conferences with parents and students. Anyone who is following the class (again, they have to be invited to follow) can see the times that I have available and select one of my appointment slots. I can set the length of time for each appointment slot, the number of slots per day, and the days on which I will be available. Once an appointment slot has been claimed no one else can claim it and I don’t have to worry about being double-booked.

On Thursday of this week I’ll be hosting a free webinar about how to use Bloomz. The webinar will be at 7pm Eastern Time. Click here to register.

Doodle provides an easier way than using email chains to choose mutually acceptable meeting times. Doodle is essentially a polling platform for selecting meeting times. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how easy it is to use Doodle.com.

Here are this week’s most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com:
1. Seven Web-based Tools for Delivering Flipped Lessons
2. A Delicious Science Lesson – The Chemistry of Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
3. VocApp – Create Multimedia Vocabulary Flashcards
4. The First Thanksgiving – Lessons and Activities for Elementary School Students
5. 75 Google Apps Video Tutorials
6. Create Great Visual Stories on Adobe Slate
7. An Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary

Would you like to have me speak at your school or conference?
Click here to learn about my professional development services.
A new section of my popular online course Getting Going With GAFE is starting on November 24th. The course has an option to earn three graduate credits. Click here for the details.

Disclosure: Bloomz is currently advertising through MindRocket Media Group. I am a partner in the MindRocket Media Group.