Have you heard of Doodle? It's a great resource for scheduling parent-teacher conferences. It's both quick and easy for teachers to schedule and parents to sign up. I've been using Doodle for the last three years. Trying to accommodate everyone with paper copies sent home took more time and I found myself constantly switching things to get it right.
I'm going to take you through a quick tutorial to get your started. The first step is giving your event a name. Location and description are left blank because I think both of those things would be self explanatory to parents.
Select as many dates as you'd like. Click the double arrow to move to the next month.
You enter what times you have available for conferences for the dates you selected. This is part of Doodle will take you the most time since you tailor the schedule to fit your needs.
You'll notice at first you only see three different time slots. Simply click on add further time slots for any date. Our parent conference night is the 29th, so I kept adding more time slots until I had what I needed.
Pay close attention to your settings before you finalize your schedule. The options are self explanatory. Always make sure you choose only one participant per option and limit what they can pick. I like the hidden poll option because sometimes not everyone needs to know what other are doing. Not everything is always everyone's business know what I mean?
I always choose to send the invitation myself.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy your now ready to share with parents! The time is takes me from start to finish is less than 10 minutes.Doodle will email you an admin link. Keep it handy just in case you need to make changes. The participation link goes out to all your parents.
Remind your parents to include their name when they sign up and hit submit to lock in their preferred time. When a parent participates you'll get an email from Doodle. From that point I go back to my admin link to see what times have been taken.
Shout out to my techie-fied parents this year! They are rocking and rolling with technology! I should clarify that I do send out the traditional paper forms for conferences, but it is by request only. I explain online sign up is easier for both parents and myself. Confirmation for a conference via a paper form takes longer to get back to parents, plus the date and time they want might get taken quickly.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
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