We have added new features to your favorite online school calendar again! This time we made two significant upgrades that allow users to take advantage of more recent technology.

-Twitter: You can now post a tweet about new and changed events to your twitter account straight from your school calendar.  You can also sign in to Twitter with your Twitter login if you are already signed into Twitter.

-QR codes: You can now print a PDF document containing QR codes for specific groups and facilities that will allow smartphone users to automatically sync events with their personal calendar.

-Ability to disable/remove: Schools, Schedules, Photos, News, and Yearly Calendars

-Batch invoicing for Facility Rentals

-Better “Edit Recurrence” wizard for Event and Facility Rentals

Enjoy!

These past two weeks have seen a lot of great articles posted on our Twitter stream.  You can view them all by going to twitter.com/intand.  Below are a few of our more interesting tweets:

Ideas to Increase Parent Communication in Schools – This article focuses on ways schools can increase communication with parents.  It lists many very actionable measures that a school can use to increase parent communication.

Put Your School’s Calendar Online! – Somewhat of an older article but the point remains the same, put you school’s calendar online!  And we couldn’t agree more.  With today’s technology their is no reason not to put your school calendar online.

Target Announces Plans to Reach $1 Billion in Support of Education – It is always great to hear that corporations are willing to put money into education.  Target is donating another $500 million to help education as part of a new reading initiative.

Wow! What a busy week here at Intand!  The past two weeks have seen us attend two different trade shows.  The first show we attended was the National Rural Education Association conference in Branson, MO.  This was a great way for us to spread the word about how rural schools can benefit from using an online school calendar.  Special thanks to John Hill and everyone at NREA for making this great show come together!

The second show we attended was the Tech & Learning conference in Phoenix, AZ. This was the second year in a row that we attended this conference and are sad to find out that it will be the last.  In the future, the NSBA conference and T & L will be combined into one major conference.

Thank you to the current customers that stopped by our booth!  It was great to meet you and we hope you enjoy your Starbucks gift cards!

It is apparent to many that a strong involvement in a student’s education by a parent is integral to a successful education; what is not as apparent is how to do that. Below I have collected a couple different articles that go in depth about how to best facilitate communication between parents and schools.

Assessing Technology’s Role in Communication between Parents and Middle Schools – This article is more academic than the others but is still a great read. It goes in detail about the six different types of parental involvement as defined by the Epstein framework. For example, Type 3 requires schools to be proactive by inviting parents to participate in school activities. Wouldn’t that be a great use of Tandem for Schools?

Parent-Teacher Communication Advice from Veteran Teachers – This is a list of about ten tips from veteran teachers. Be sure to skim it and get some ideas!

When we are not busy building the best online school calendar available, we like to take a look at what others in education technology are working on. Below are a couple of those highlights from last week. To find more articles like these, follow us on Twitter!

One Laptop per Child: This is a great read regarding how far the one laptop per child initiative has come. Can’t wait to see where this goes in the future! http://tiny.cc/ikjhx

Facebook for Teachers: A super-intendent in California has revealed a program aimed at letting Teachers collaborate in an environment similar to Facebook. It allows teachers to create profiles and access a database of teaching resources. http://tiny.cc/g2gji

Many schools still use paper calendars and may be satisfied with that process. So, why should a school switch?  Here are just a few reasons:

-Constantly out of date:  Often times a paper school calendar is out of date the moment it is printed.  If any changes occur to the calendar, you have no way to instantly notify all staff, students, or parents.

-Go green: The number of paper calendars and newsletters can easily be reduced by implementing an electronic calendar. Thus, reducing the environmental impact that a school has.

-Reduce costs:  The cost of printing multiple calendars can be in the thousands.

-Accessibility:  An online school calendar can viewed from anywhere with an internet connection.

-All events in one place:  Store all school events in one place online.

Have you noticed any other benefits than an electronic calendar has over an online calendar?  Let us know!

Tandem is a great tool for not only the school but as well as the community.  We recently had a submission from a school that really understood how important Tandem can be to the community.  Below is a link to a short video that Ruffing Montessori created to demonstrate Tandem to the community.

http://www.ruffingmontessori.net/Intand%20for%20Schools_demo/Intand%20for%20Schools_demo.htm

How do you promote Tandem to the community?  Have you created a video like Ruffing Montessori?

Let us know!  We look forward to hearing from you!

We love to hear from our customers about how we can improve Tandem and have recently spent some time implementing the requested changes. Here are just a few features that we have recently added to your favorite school event calendar:

1. Copied events can now be marked as tentative or cancelled

2. The day of the week can now be added to event details (i.e. Monday, Tuesday, etc…)

3. An “Event Status” column has been added to indicate either “Active”, “Cancelled”, or “Tentative”. This applies to imported events as well

4. Spell check has been added to the description and notes fields

5. Increase the speed of calendars with a lot of event action history

6. The drop down box for selecting an event time now appears above the textbox instead of below for certain fields

Thank you to everyone for submitting requests!

We recently conducted a survey to find out how schools are encouraging parents to use Tandem.  Here are just some of their responses:

• Provide instructions on school/district website

• Conduct training for parents

• Send a mass email to parents

• Include calendar info on all sports schedules

• Give each parent a Tandem info card

• Advertise your calendar in your Newsletter

• Advertise your calendar in your Handbook

• Send out an Announcement

• Tell everyone at Back to School Night

• Display the calendar at your Open House

• Include the Tandem web address on printed

Yearly Calendars

• Tell parents on every inbound call

• Include calendar info on flyers sent home

• Link Tandem sports schedules on website

• Word of mouth—keep talking about it

• Make it THE way you operate—get on board or

be left behind

• Post it on the city website

• Discuss the calendar at parent/teacher mtgs

• Link intro video on school/district website

• Distribute the “Calendar Intro & Instructions”

word doc to students and parents

• Mandate that the calendar is THE place to get

information—not over the phone

• Eliminate printed calendar and direct everyone

to your website instead

• Include the online calendar web address on

your activity hotline

• Mention the online calendar at every event

Leave a comment if you can think of any other ways!

For a limited time, you can enter for a chance to win Tandem for Schools. We are offering a one year license to Tandem Standard for one lucky school. This is a great opportunity to get a hold of Tandem for Schools without having to pay for it! To enter the contest, follow the link below:

http://wildfireapp.com/website/6/contests/56187

We already have many great entries but it is not too late to enter! The sweepstakes will run until Oct. 15^th, at which point we will pick a winner.

Good Luck!