On-line School-wide Assignment Calendar

Purpose

The faculty and administration of CPS maintain an on-line assignment calendar to help moderate the workload on any given student on any given day. Referencing the on-line calendar, a teacher can evaluate the number and scope of assignments made of any student in any grade before adding another assignment to the calendar. This system will only work, however, if every teacher makes regular use of the assignment calendar. We've put the system on-line in hopes that it will make such compliance easier.

Any assignment that requires student preparation or time beyond the scope of the normal homework load should be noted on the assignment calendar. Similarly, extra- or co-curricular events such as late-night rehearsals or field trips should be noted on the calendar.

Using the Calendar

The calendars can be found on the CPSNet e-mail system in Faculty Announcements and in Campus News. There is a separate calendar for each grade year. The basic idea of the calendaring system is that a teacher will create a "Calendar Event" for each day corresponding to the days on which an assignment is taking place. Viewing and creating items on the assignment calendar is fairly intuitive, so if you've got an adventurous spirit where it comes to computers, disregard this voluminous text and go ahead and give it a try.

...the abridged version:

1. Open the calendar for the grade(s) that will be affected by your assignment.
2. Navigate to the dates that will be impacted by the assignment (the calendar can be viewed by day, week, or month.)
3. Double click on an empty space within the intended calendar date. This will create a "New Calendar Event." You can also perform this same action from the "File-->New..." menu or with shortcut keys.
4. Fill out the form thusly (note the red writing):
5. When you are finished, simply close the window and your calendar event will be saved.
6. Caveats:
   
   • Don't create a "New Task." Those will show up on the daily calendar until they are marked as complete.
   • You will be notified of "Conflicts." A conflict will happen when there is another event scheduled for that time frame. One conflict is fine. Three or four are a problem that Sharona or Linh can help you address.
   • You can delete any of your own calendar entries by highlighting the event and hitting the delete button on your keyboard; other faculty members cannot.

Details, details...

(Watch this space, in which I will address any issues that people consistently have with the process.)

• Any faculty member can create a calendar item.
• Any faculty member can delete his or her own entries, but not those of other faculty members.
• A faculty member cannot edit a calendar item. If you need to ammend an entry that you created, you must delete the entry and recreate the event.
• Different calendar views will truncate the title of your entry in different ways. Do not be overly concerned that all of the details of your calendar event appear in every view of the assignment calendar. The reader can always learn more about the event by double clicking on the event.
• Sharona, Linh, and the Tech Staff are empowered to make changes to any calander entry.
• You can look at the history of any calendar item to learn who created, modified, or read the calendar event.
• Students can view the assignment calendars.