googleicalendar

[1] Calendar is an application that comes preinstalled with Appleʻs new operating system, Mountain Lion. Formerly known as iCal for Appleʻs previous operating systems, it enables you to create several different calendars to suit your personal and professional needs. With Calendar, you can share your schedule with others via the internet. Calendar works in conjunction with the contact information on your computer to manage invitations you create and receive from those in your various contacts. Calendar syncs up with iCloud, Yahoo!, or Google in order to display any and all information you add to your personal devices like tablets or smart phones through the calendar mobile app. [2] Google Calendar is an online application that works similarly to Appleʻs Calendar application. It allows you to share your schedule with others, send and receive invitations, and syncs to the google calendar mobile app. The biggest difference between the Apple Calendar and Google Calendar is its universal usability. The Apple Calendar is free as well, but it requires Appleʻs 10.7 Lion or 10.8 Mountain Lion operating systems to use.

Apple Calendar
[3] On July 17, 2002 at the MacWorld Expo in New York, Apple introduced iCal as a new calendar program with built-in internet sharing. iCal was made available as a free download at www.apple.com/ical and required the Apple operating system, Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar." Publishing calendars on the internt also required a .Mac membership or access to a WebDAV server. When Apple announced the release of their new operating system Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion," on June 6, 2011 [4] this changed over iCal from a traditional desktop application to an Apple App Store application. Like the mobile apps you can download on your personal Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Lion had an integrated app system introduced on the desktop as well. This transformed iCal into what is now known simply as the Calendar app.

Google Calendar
[5] On April 13, 2006 Google announced Google Calendar, a free, web-based calendar service. As soon as users sign in at www.google.com/calendar with their google account, they would have immediate access to the Google Calendar application.

Features

 * ====__Feature__==== ||= ====__Apple Calendar__==== ||= ====__Google Calendar__==== || ====__Details__==== ||
 * Digital Event Entry ||= x ||= x || Input event data digitally ||
 * Device Sync ||= x ||= x || Sync information on desktop and mobile devices via the internet ||
 * Mobility ||= x ||= x || Mobile version available for tablet or smart phones ||
 * Notifications ||= x ||= x || Sends event reminders to phone or desktop ||
 * eVites ||= x ||= x || Send and receive invitations for events via the internet ||
 * Cost ||= Free DL ||= Free Online ||  ||
 * Platform ||= Mac OS X 10.7+ ||= Mac OS X or Windows ||  ||

Impact On Teaching & Learning
Students and teachers alike can have rigorous schedules. There are so many appointments and assignments which make planners and calendars a must. With either Apple or Google's Calendar applications, life can be made much easier. In-class details, assignments, presentations and meeting places can all be seamlessly entered into a calendar application at the convenience of a mobile device or desktop/laptop computer.

When students receive their course schedules, all of that information can be added into their mobile device. Notice the "Event Details" below to the right. They reflect the details for the calendar date shown below to the left on September 27, 2012. The event details contain the course subject material scheduled for that date, "ETEC602 Introduction to Web Design." "On Campus" shows the student that the class will be on campus, versus online that day. Class time is from 4:30p - 7pm. "Calendar" reflects which calendar this event has been linked with. In this case it has been linked with a Gmail account. The student has synced their Google Calendar with their iPhone Calendar App. "Alert" shows 2 hours and 1 day before. The student has chosen to have 2 alerts remind them about this class and it's assignments. "Notes" shows the activities for the class and assignments that are due on this date. All of this information is at a students fingertips making life much easier. When information is needed about the class, its all right there on their phone. No more searching for the syllabus print out, or tracking down a classmate for the information.

Apple doesn't expect users to have to type all of this on a phone keypad for each class throughout an entire semester. Syncing this mobile app to the desktop application (see image below) allows users to input all of their information on their personal computer. Once there, the information is synced via Apple's iCloud service and will appear on all mobile device(s).

If a student isnʻt an Apple user, or just doesn't like the Apple Calendar application, they have the other option to link their Google Calendar to their iPhone calendar or even their Android calendar app. Similar to the Apple Calendar, users can manage calendar entries on their desktop (see image below). If Google Calendar has been synced to the iPhone Calendar, anything entered on the desktop will appear in the smart phone calendar app also. Currently, Google has their mobile calendar app available to Android users only as it comes built in to Android devices. Although there are free working alternatives available to iPhone users, for example one called CalenMob - Google Calendar Client.

These are easy ways for students keep track of their own information for classes. Through these same methods, teachers could take this a step further and set up their schedules in either Apple or Google's calendar applications. It can be shared with students of the class via the internet and those with smart phones can have access to the schedule right away. Even those without smart phones can benefit because they can still view the calendar schedule online through their personal desktop computers. At higher levels of education (at least high school and above) it is rare that students don't have regular access to a computer, the internet, or a smartphone. With technology continuing to spread, especially in the younger generations, it makes sense to implement technology based learning in to education. Calendars and schedules are just one small way it can be done.

For Students:

 * recording course schedule
 * notifications/alerts for assignment and test dates
 * schedule sharing for group work collaboration
 * easy access to entire schedule on multiple devices

For Teachers:

 * uploading class schedule for students easy access
 * notification/alert reminders for assignment grading
 * schedule changes can be easily distributed among students through syncing
 * easy introduction for use of technology based learning implementation

Apple Calendar
Apple's online support center provides step by step information on how to use their calendar application. Here they tell you how to create reminders, share your calendars, and sync with an idevice.

Google Calendar
Google has an App Learning Center that provides links to video tutorials that teach you how to use the various Google apps. Google Calendar has it's own section in the App Learning Center where you can learn about notifications and reminders, how to share a calendar and even add google maps in a calendar event. media type="youtube" key="DXifKssFmlI" height="315" width="560"

About The Author
Ho'omano Pakele is graduate student in the Educational Technology program at UH Mānoa. This wikispaces page was created in late September of 2012 for the ETEC 602 Innovations in Educational Technology class with Dr. Curtis Ho.