 I'm going to show you a really easy way for your parents to self schedule their parent teacher conferences, which can also include a Google Meet link in case they need to be remote. It's really easy to do and it's free. And Google Calendar will do all the hard work for you. So the first thing we need to do is you need to enable the new feature from Google Calendar of appointment schedules. So we need to go over to the gear in the top right corner and then go down to settings. Once you're in settings, on the bottom left over here you'll see appointment schedules. Click on that and you're going to tick the box down here that says create appointment schedules instead of appointment slots. Appointment slots was an older way that Google Calendar could do this. This way is significantly better. So tick that box, you'll see that your settings are saved, and then you can hit the back arrow and go back to your calendar. So now that it's enabled, you're able to schedule these appointment schedules. Go over to the create button and use the little down arrow and then go down to appointment schedule. You'll want to name what the schedule is, I'm just going to call it conferences. And then whatever your duration of each schedule is. Now our conferences are 15 minutes long, so if you click the drop down, you can change it to 15 minutes. If you needed a 30 minute conference, you would just schedule two of them back to back. I also like to see how this all plays out. So on my calendar here on the right, our conferences aren't, right now it's October, but our conferences aren't until February. So if I just click over until I get to the February conference time. Here's our February 2nd and February 3rd. When I go down here to general availability, by default it's set up to be repeating. That means if I were to set up one of these appointment schedules, it will go on for the whole year. But since we're doing this for conferences, we really only need some targeted days. I'm going to change that little drop down from repeat weekly to does not repeat. And then this is where things will change. So I'm going to give the example of just our conference schedule in the winter here. So our first day of our conferences is in fact February 2nd. So I'm going to choose February 2nd. And our conferences start on that day at 1.30 in the afternoon. We have a half day of school. It goes from 1.30 until 4.30. So that's our first little chunk of time. And if I look over here to the right, you can see that right here, that's my first bundle of conferences available. We also have on that same day, we have a dinner break from 4.30 to 5. And then from 5 to 8 o'clock, we have conferences again. So if I go over to this plus button on the same line, so you can see February 2nd here, if I hit the plus button, it gives me another time chunk. And our conferences go from 5 o'clock until 8 o'clock. So then once again, if I go over here on the right hand side, you can see here's that conference chunk. On the 2nd, my first section, which is the afternoon, and then my evening conferences. We also have conferences on Friday the 3rd. So if I go back over here, underneath the 2nd, I go down a little bit more, it says add a date. If I click on that and I choose the 3rd, you can see it jumps in that new bundle of schedules. We have a half day that day as well, and we would start conferences at 1.30, and then they go till 4.30. So there's our three sections of conferences. So yours may be different, but right now for this year, this is what our schedule is. The next thing you do want to double check is to make sure that you're on the right time zone. Every once in a while, this changes, somebody might hit a wrong setting on their computer. So just double check to make sure you are on the correct time zone. And then we go to our next option, which is our scheduling window. I click the dropdown. This allows me to restrict when people can use my appointment schedule. Generally, I wouldn't give the link for parents to sign up until maybe two weeks before conferences. So really, we don't need this. This is only important if you're setting something up maybe long term or way in advance and you don't want people getting in early. But because I'm not going to give this until I'm ready for parents to actually sign up, I'm going to untick this box. The second one is how far in advance on time can they sign up? So maybe I can let them sign up 10 days in advance, but I don't want them changing the schedule 10 minutes before the conference. In my case, I'm happy if parents just show up. So I'm going to uncheck this box and not restrict a limit the amount of time before a conference can be signed up. And I would highly encourage both of those boxes to be left blank. Then we can go to our booked appointment settings section. Click the dropdown. Our buffer time is how much time do you require in between schedules? So for an example, I use something called Calendly. It's very similar to this. If someone were to book me, I have a buffer of 10 minutes before somebody else can book me. And what that does is it gives me time to get from one meeting to the next. It gives me some travel time. Since we're back to back on conferences, you don't need any buffer time in here. So leave that blank. And then we don't need to have a maximum number of people that can book us in the day. So you can leave that blank as well. You just need to click the next button. This is how it kind of looks to your parents. So they're going to see your name and your Google image, so whatever you have uploaded into your Google account. But here's where you will want to change a couple of things. The location. For example, we're offering in-person and remote option. So this is a great place because when I click this location, if we were just in-person, I would say in-person meeting and they would know to come to my classroom. There's no other option. But if I add this top option, Google Meet video conferencing, if I just click that, what that does is every single time a parent signs up, they will receive an email, a confirmation email, and a reminder email later on that will have the link to the virtual meeting. So if that person is in-person, they ignore the link, they show up in my classroom, we have conferences as usual. If that person is going to be a remote conference, the emails that they get from Google Calendar already have the link in there. And the best part is, as the teacher, I don't have to make it. Google makes the links for me. So by choosing this top option, Google Meet video conferencing, it automatically adds it in. So I would just tell parents if you're in-person, ignore the link. The description here, you would just give directions on, you know, I'm excited to meet and discuss your child's progress. If you're in-person, just show up in my classroom at your scheduled time. If you're a remote conference, please click the link in the email that you receive. So you would write those directions on and anything else you want them to be aware of for your conference. Now remember, this goes to every parent, so don't make this individualized. This is just the blanket description of your conferences. The conferencing, the booking form right here, this is important. So as I scroll down, by default, it records the first name, the last name, and the email address of the person signing up. But there are, for me, a couple more pieces of information I might want. So if I go down and click Add an item, a pop-up comes up, I can click the dropdown because I don't care about the phone number. I'm going to make a custom and I'm going to say student name because sometimes the last name of the parent doesn't match. I just need to make sure I know which student it is and make sure to make it required, otherwise they may forget to fill that in. So I'm also asking, I want the student's name. I'm going to add another item, I'm going to go down to custom and I'm going to say remote or in-person. I want them to tell me, are they going to be a remote conference? So I know I have to click on that Google Meet link or if they're in-person and I know they're just going to show up in my classroom. Click the required button so that they have to answer it. Click Add item. So those are the questions they're going to get in the form and you'll see that in a little while. And then the bottom, you can add more reminders. So by default, they're going to get a confirmation email when they book you, when they sign up for their conference time. And according to this, they're going to get an email one day before their conference day. And you can adjust that. You can go by minutes and hours a day before or a custom. You could have it a week before, whatever you want. So whatever your feeling is, I think a day before is really good because they get the email when they sign up. And then a day before their conference, they get another reminder email. So that's as hard as is. That's all you have to do. It's set up and ready to go. So I just have to hit the Save button. And then I will get this pop-up. So this pop-up is basically giving me, like, here's how you get your link. Here's what you need to do. All I have to do is hit this Share button. And normally I would just copy this link. And that's fine. You can share that link. That works perfectly. But I want to kind of show you what it looks like. So if I just copied this link and send it to the parents, they're good to go. But if I click this Preview button right here, I'm going to get a chance to see what a parent would see. So here's really what I want to share with my parents. This is a good link. So if I just click the Share button here, copy that link and send it to parents, you're golden and you're ready. But this is what your parents are going to see. So they're going to see, OK, conferences, February 2nd through the 3rd, they're 15 minutes. And here, this blank spot is really that description that I didn't fill in, but you would have had all the directions for conferences or details that they needed to see. So when I click on it, it takes me to Google Calendar. And because I'm doing this right now, it's October. We're a little early. I'm just happened to be working on this right now. I'm going to go ahead and jump to the February date. So normally, this is what they would see because they'd be opening it around the week of conferences. And the parent is going to see all the available times that I have for conferences. So this is the link you want to share with them. Just go ahead and copy this or hit the Share button, however you want to do it. And this is the link you'll send to all of your parents. I would suggest maybe making a tiny URL or a bit.ly, make life easy, but you could also just send this through your mind, through any kind of communication you have with your parents. When they get here, this is the page they'll see, they'll scroll down and they'll pick the time. So I'm going to pick 3 o'clock on Tuesday. When a parent clicks it, mine has my name and everything in it because I've used it before. They may have to type theirs in in their email address. Their student name, I'm just going to say my kiddo is Billy Bob. And I'm going to say I want a remote conference. So they're going to fill this form in and all they have to do is click the Book button. They get this little reminder, hey, here's what you have, you've signed up for this time, here's the Google link, you're all good. If you need to cancel, it's right here. They can always cancel or adjust this later on. I'm going to show you what the parent sees for their email because that's important for them to see. When they open the email, this can be added directly to their Google calendar so they'll get a reminder on their phone. They can also download it as an ICS file so they can use it in any format. But the beauty is right here, this big blue button, when it's time for their conference, if there are a remote conference, all they have to do is click this button and Google Meet opens up. And if you're already in the meeting, they're in, ready to go. It's super simple. So they get this when they confirm and then they'll get a reminder, whatever your timing is, whether you said it a day before or a few hours before, you could even set one up, especially if you're having remote conferences, half an hour before so they get another reminder with the link so there's no reason they don't have the link, but it's so easy. All they have to do is click that button. Super simple. And in my calendar, what I'm going to see are right here, you can see these little icons, those are my schedules, but right here is the conference for Billy Bob. And you can see, now right now I'm only seeing one right here, but if I had 20 conferences that day, there'd be a list of all 20 conferences in order by their time. And all I have to do is the teacher, I would see this one's for Billy Bob, I just have to click and it opens the Meet. So now I'm in the Meet and then the parent can join right away. So it's really, really simple for the parents and the teacher to use this.