I have always been a strong believer in the expression that "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." My experience as a school counselor and now a university professor have taught me that the educational setting is one that can be quite complicated, chaotic and unpredictable. Planning is a key to successfully accomplishing goals and getting results. Planning encompasses many things including creating a vision for where your plan will take you, leading others into joining the cause, developing strategy for most effectively getting results; prioritizing, coordinating resources (human, financial, and time), and much, much more. This column will look at one aspect of planning, the action of calendaring (i.e., the purposeful and systematic system of managing time and task for accomplishing an overall mission). technology can be very useful in helping the school counselor (or anyone, really) in developing comprehensive school counseling programs.

Annual Calendar. The yearly calendar is a way for school counselors to identify the school counseling program priorities and their commitment to them. Ideally, the calendar s located in several prominent places such as the department bulletin board, school or student bulletin boards, class- room bulletin boards, administrative offices, parent or guardian center, career center, student store and other sites used to communicate school events. It may also be submitted to the local newspaper, the student newspaper and the school counseling department’s website to increase the program’s visibility.

Your school or district may already have an online calendaring/event system which you use. Or, they may provide you with specific software (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) to get the job done. The remainder of this brief column is to increase your awareness of various technological tools to help you keep and appropriately publish your school counseling calendars ...

The Microsoft Outlook Calendar is actually part of Outlook, and entire PIM (personal information manager) that includes tasks, e-mail, notes, Journaling, and contacts. This is a very powerful tool that can help you accomplish all three levels of the calendars previously mentioned. In fact, the Outlook Calendar allows you to keep more than one calendar so you can have all three under the same system. Other features of Outlook that work well for a school counselor’s calendaring needs are its ability to:

• share calendars with colleagues and assistants;
• view your calendar and those of your colleagues side by side;
• coordinate meetings by finding available times (of course, everyone needs to be using the calendar to do this);
• publish parts or entire calendars online;
• easily set up recurring appointments and reminders (e.g., remind yourself once a year to publish a document or call someone; remind yourself to call a parent every week for the next 3 weeks).

A comprehensive list of frequently asked questions and answers about Microsoft Outlook 2003 Calendar from the University of Tennessee.

Step by step instructions.

How much of your day is spent on e-mail? A study done by the ePolicy Institute found that the average worker spends a whopping one hour and 47 minutes a day on e-mail, but web workers often spend far more time than that on it. That’s why it makes sense to take a break from sending and receiving your e-missives and get to know some of the efficiency-boosting tips and tricks you can use. A couple of minutes spent studying these can make you faster, better organized and more productive.

Microsoft Outlook 2003's Calendar and Meeting / Appointment reminder tool. Tweaks, locale customizations, adding holidays, and more.

Another option is to use the free and yet powerful Google Calendar. Features of this calendar include:

– Gmail Integration. Gmail now recognizes when messages mention events, and you can add those events to your calendar with just a couple clicks.

– Quick Add. Just click a spot on your calendar (or use the Quick Add link) and start typing to add a new event

– Calendar Sharing. View calendars that others have shared with you, and let your friends and family see your agenda.

– Invitations. Send invitations for any event on your calendar by adding guests

– Reminders. Never forget another event again. You can even get reminders sent right to your mobile phone.

– Search. Find the date of the classroom guidance you did on cyberbullying about 8 weeks ago. Or, search public calendars to discover new events you're interested in and add them to your own calendar.

– Mobile Access. Receive event reminders and notifications on your mobile phone.

– Event Publishing. Share your counseling program’s events with the world.

Everything from keyboard shortcuts to customized viewing.

Got an event you'd like to have other people remember? Use the Remind Me with Google Calendar button. All you need to do is fill out the necessary fields and ta da! A block of HTML appears that you can include in your site or blog. The next time you get a visitor, they can just click on the "Remind Me" button to add your event to their Google Calendar.

Google Calendar makes it easy for you to share events and publish events and calendars on your website. If your website mentions events — including reservations, appointments, conferences and shows, Google Calendar can help your users find this information and easily add it to their own calendars. This guide explains all the options.

Yet another free and powerful option for calendaring comes from the Mozilla group and is called either Sunbird or Lightning.

Sunbird is a standalone calendar application. It doesn't need another client application to run at the cost of a larger download and higher memory requirements. Because of its standalone nature, Sunbird does not offer any kind of tight integration with an e-mail application, such as Mozilla Thunderbird. Lightning is a calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird (an e-mail application). It offers calendaring features directly in the Thunderbird User Interface. Further integration features, such as e-mail invites or address book integration are planned for future releases.

You may prefer Lightning if...

* you send or receive meeting invitations via e-mail

* you already use Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail

* you customize your applications with add-ons (such as extensions or themes)

You may prefer Sunbird if...

* you prefer your calendar to be separate from your e-mail client

* you don't currently use Mozilla Thunderbird for your e-mail

* you don't like adding add-ons (such as extensions or themes) to your applications

The Printable CEO™ (PCEO) was born from a desire to focus my time more productively. For me, that means things that make my freelance practice sustainable and fun. The Printable CEO name comes from the idea that a good CEO should focus primarily on those things that move the company forward; since I can’t afford to hire my own CEO, being able to print one out seemed like the next best thing! :-) Here you’ll find a series of printable forms that help manage the day-to-day chore of achieving your goals.

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The Backpack Calendar lets you keep your schedule online and accessible from any computer. Work, home, vacation — you can get to it from anywhere. You can even share calendars with other people using the iCalendar file format.

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This section of Mind Tools shows you how to use personal time management skills. These are the simple, practical techniques that have helped the leading people in business, sport and public service reach the pinnacles of their careers.

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Use of time with downloadable forms.

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