Comments on: Isn’t It Time Your Kid’s School Used A Web-Based Calendar?

By: School Calendars Made Simple

School Calendars Made Simple — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:06:29 +0000

[...] Intand was on TechCrunch recently for their partnership with Cozi to launch the site SchoolCal.org which provides parents [...]

By: Bryan Otis

Bryan Otis — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:12:54 +0000

Wow! This is off like a rocket! We have seen a huge amount of demand from parents voting to get their schools yearly calendar published. I wanted to hop on the boards quickly to answer some of the questions raised here:

1. antje wilsch – Security is a large concern at Intand. We take it very seriously. Yearly calendar data is already available at most (if not all) school websites. We are just helping to digitize it so any parent or student can subscribe to it in their digital calendars, be that Cozi, Outlook, iCal or Google Calendars. Practically, this helps a family keep up to speed when a snow day pushes back the last day of school. It will automatically update in your digital calendar, keeping your calendar current with information coming directly from the school.

2. Joe Bauers – So did my mom! We had the calendar taped to the inside of the cupboard where the glasses where. It’s not difficult to keep a paper calendar on your fridge. It’s extremely difficult for that paper calendar to update itself when a date changes. If you live and breathe by your digital calendar, like I do, then its nice to have it automatically update when dates change. (ps. Tandem basic provides an easy way to print out the yearly calendar in PDF, so you can keep it on the fridge. Its the best of both worlds!)

3. Jeff Utecht – AGREED! Further, trying having a 3rd, 7th and 12 grader… all at separate schools. The need for digital calendar feeds becomes exponential.

4. NM – Bring on digital is right! From a sustainable standpoint, digital calendars save paper. Paper purchased with tax payer money.

5. M A Dhavan – Funding for a FREE product is easy! Also, the analysis on the paid versions of Tandem is staggering. More room rentals, drastic reductions in paper, phone calls… not to mention a de-stressed staff knowing that ALL of their facilities are scheduled in a conflict free calendar.

Hope these answer up some questions.

Personally, it means a great deal to be featured alongside Schoolcal.org and Cozi on Techcrunch. Everyone here at Intand is extremely passionate about helping school districts use Tandem to manage their district, run their schools and engage with their community.

If you have any more questions, give us a ring!

Bryan Otis
President / Co-Founder at Intand

By: Kathy Cox

Kathy Cox — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:01:17 +0000

We understand the issue of security. Our system including forms, calendar, web portal, and emails is private and secure. Parents only get the information they want and ask for. They get to personalize by grade, teacher, group, etc. I don’t mean to sound like a pitch but our service is so relevant to the discussion.

By: free online games for kids

free online games for kids — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:04:16 +0000

I think security will remain an issue in most online systems. So having a combination of what events to post online and what events to email directly to parents might be good to balance off not publishing too much online. The idea of having passwords and username to a website to view the calendar isn’t bad, but it just takes a tremendous amount of administration.

By: nate

nate — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:45:03 +0000

Well. I am trying to get something off the ground for parents using group-office, an open source application, that would have shared calendars, tasks, address book, file sharing and notes, based upon micro-groups per say. I would love some help if anyone out the wants to shoot me an email. On the website I am already offering free online calendar for parents, focusing on two household situation primararily, but not exclusively. Don’t steal my idea@@@

By: Jason A. Trommetter

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:52:56 +0000

Our school district already has an online calendar. It’s not very easy to use, but it’s there. You can export individual events in iCal format. Maybe that’s done on purpose so you only grab the events you need?

By: kevin

kevin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:18:54 +0000

calendAr not calendEr!

By: DanGTD

DanGTD — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:42:46 +0000

You can also use the Schedules feature from http://www.Gtdagenda.com to keep your school schedule. A mobile version of the schedules is available too.

By: M A Dhavan

M A Dhavan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:46:06 +0000

Some of the reasons behind schools are reluctant to go online are, they don’t want to disclose the activities of the schools as well as details of the students, because of the security reasons and also the funding for the software also maybe a problem

By: Kathy Cox

Kathy Cox — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:52:45 +0000

I started ParentOrganizer to get rid of the communication mess of backpack papers and multiple emails. Calendars are great but are just one piece of the communication puzzle. We have sent more than 20 million personalized and aggregated emails since 2001 with a corresponding web portal. We provide a complete communication system for schools and PTAs to communicate to parents to really become paperless. We are launching a major upgrade in a few months. We have saved tons of paper, time, and money for our customers. Check us out at http://www.parentorganizer.com. The site is our old site but gives you an idea what we do.

By: Frank Ross

Frank Ross — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:40:00 +0000

This idea about 5 years old. If a school is in this state the state should probably take them over. Time to catch up people. Blackboard, Angel Leanring, eChalk, Desire to Learn, even Moodle. Look into them.

By: Jeff Utecht

Jeff Utecht — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:30:42 +0000

I think the ability for parents to combine calendars in today’s fast pace child focused world is something schools need to look into. Sure, growing up I had a school calendar and a baseball practice calendar. 3rd graders at my school have the following:

School calendar
Violin calendar
basketball calendar
tennis calendar
after school activities calendar

add to that two parents working and the need for a calendar system whether something like this or just straight up Gcal becomes essential.

By: K One

K One — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:20:54 +0000

I don’t blame them with parents suing the schools for everything bad happening in the school premises http://www.cnn....sexual.assault/

By: NM

NM — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:58:47 +0000

I hate paper & welcome more stuff online. What’s wrong with parents having a password? Absolutely nothing! Have you seen how much paper comes home? Yeah, sometimes it’s nice to have something to hold in hand to read while you’re rocking the baby to sleep, but paper ends up on the floor. I vote digital!!!!

Geesh, even email it!

Bring on the digital world!!!

By: Me

Me — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:11:12 +0000

Just recently our district upgraded the webpage, and while they had a web calender for sporting events, more stuff is upfront and included now, included school events on video (though only wmv).
the great thing about it was that they just had a built in calender with the school software (a php script I assume), and when they upgraded, they had much more.
Im surprised more schools don’t just use a script for the job

By: RahulC

RahulC — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:29:37 +0000

I have 2 daughters and share the concern. 10 years back how many of us would have agreed to PUT our credit card informations online.

I am sure with time as we get more comfortable and the system gets more secured we will eventually see schools opening to these ideas.

By: Matthew O

Matthew O — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:08:07 +0000

My high school uses google calender for sports and music practices…it’s nice, but not great: when you just want to see orchestra rwhersals, they get really bogged down in all the other activites.

I also got a good laugh when my school system made a twitter account to provide updates on swine flu.

By: david

david — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:44:21 +0000

funding has nothing to do with it.

By: Bob Calder

Bob Calder — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:43:05 +0000

We have been using spongecell for a couple of years. I’m not enamoured of the limited display.

I honestly don’t like the amazing number of vertical applicaiton vendors. For instance we use Moodle though teh rest of the district uses Blackboard.

By: 学校も行事予定表をウェブに載せてよい頃では？

学校も行事予定表をウェブに載せてよい頃では？ — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:57:08 +0000

[...] [原文へ] [...]

By: Que

Que — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:27:41 +0000

Most schools have to go through a school district of school system you seem to be not mentioning that.

By: Chino66

Chino66 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:07:31 +0000

My kids’ schools use Google Calendar. One uses Vertical Response and the other uses Constant Contact for their emails. And one of them is also tweeting reminders of events. Easy and Cheap…

By: JV

JV — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:56:10 +0000

Schools are SO far behind in leveraging the internet, but then again, funding for them keeps getting cut, so no wonder.

That said, our kids’ schools all have lesson plans posted online and most teachers post grades for each assignment, which is awesome for us parents, probably horrible for the kids. I know I would have hated it.

By: joe

joe — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:23:08 +0000

The new Chinese desktop app is tremendous!
I hear it’s going to get a billion users in no time!

By: Joe Bauers

Joe Bauers — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:18:18 +0000

Why is it so difficult to keep a paper calendar magneted to the fridge? This worked flawlessly throughout my childhood.