Friday, September 18, 2015

Youcanbook.me love

image courtesy youcanbook.me

As a Digital Learning Coach in the Clark County School District I have 8 schools that I work with. I rotate through those schools, which means the day of the week I am on campus varies each time. As you can imagine, with that number of teachers and students scheduling can become a nightmare. It's hard to remember which teacher is in which room at which school. Fortunately this year I was introduced to YouCanBook.Me, which has become my new organization love.

You can see how I have my youcanbook.me calendar set up by clicking the Schedule Me tab at the top of this blog.

Here is a short video to give you an idea of how it works.


Setup is super easy. Simply go to the youcanbook.me website and create a free account using your Google calendar or iCloud login. You'll then be guided through the dashboard to link your calendars, schedule your appointment times, and setup the booking form.

This is what the dashboard looks like for me.
I have two iCloud calendars. One shows which school I'm at on a given day. I share this calendar with my wife and boss so they can track me down. The second calendar has the actual appointments and meetings with teachers. With the free version of youcanbook.me you can only link one calendar. I embedded my school calendar on my blog and linked the appointment calendar with youcanbook.me.

In addition to designating appointment slots, you can also define what information you need to gather for each appointment. This is done on the booking form tab. In my case I need to know which school the teacher is at, which room they are in, and what help they need. When the teacher selects their desired appointment time the booking form appears, they fill in the information, and the event is added to my calendar. 

The booking form.


I can even specify how the event appears on my calendar. Not only does the appointment appear immediately on my calendar, but I get an email letting me know I have a new appointment.

I only had one small glitch that I contacted their support team about. It was a known bug, which they fixed, and even gave me a month of premium free to try out.

The results of using this booking system has been astounding so far. I can't always make it around to every classroom or meet all the teachers. When I announce to teachers that I will be on campus on a given day, I also provide a link to my youcanbook.me calendar so they can schedule a time. The amount appointments I have this year has doubled from what it was last year.

Thanks to the team and service at youcanbook.me, I feel so much more productive this school year. Thanks guys and gals!

2 comments:

  1. Mark,
    Nothing is better than efficiency and clear communication in the educational world! How many times have I tried to "hunt down" my ECS guy? Also, there tends to be more help offered to people who are closer to the ECS room than to others. Anything that allows you to hear alerts for requests of appointments is also helpful as well.

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    Replies
    1. I know! Getting help at school shouldn't be this difficult, should it?

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