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Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – Three Handy Tools for Scheduling Meetings

ByRichard Byrne

Throughout the course of the school year we all need to schedule meetings for one thing or another. Whether it is a meeting with colleagues, students, or students’ parents trying to schedule meetings efficiently can be a challenge. Here are three tools that can help you streamline the process of scheduling meetings.

Doodle is a free tool for scheduling group meetings with the input of all group members. Doodle is essentially a polling platform. To use Doodle you create a meeting title, select a series of dates and times for a possible meeting, then invite people to choose the dates and times that work best for them. As the administrator of a scheduling poll you can set the final meeting time based on the most commonly selected date and time. Watch the video below for complete directions on how to use Doodle.

Choice Eliminator is a Google Forms Add-on that lets you create a Form on which choices disappear after they have been used. For example, if I create a Google Form that has ten meeting times listed on it, once a meeting time has been selected it will disappear from the options available to subsequent visitors. Using Choice Eliminator is a good option for teachers who have personal Google Accounts, but don’t have G Suite for Education accounts. Watch the following video to learn how to use Choice Eliminator.

G Suite for Education (formerly Google Apps for Education) users can use the appointment slots feature in Google Calendar to let people select a meeting time that is convenient for all parties. The appointment slots can be used to show people when you are available and allow them to sign-up to meet with you. Complete directions for creating appointment slots can be found here.

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