Shawn Wheeler’s Thoughts on Education & Technology

Late last year I changed jobs and I now have a unique situation where I work with and for two separate districts.  It sounds like fun and it is.  However, it does create a few challenges.

We all know email is a wonderful tool but managing two separate email systems with two separate calendars and contact list is a royal pain.  For a few weeks I would send and appointment form one district email system to the other and vice versa but needless to say a few appointments were missed on each calendar and this created issues when trying to schedule meetings.  What I really needed was an assistant to keep track of me but let’s face it, no one deserves THAT job.

Then one day I was talking to a person in the office about his Android phone and his issues with synchronizing his calendar.  He told me that he was using the Google Calendar with Outlook Sync to keep the phone updated.  I thought what a pain, I love my BlackBerry.  Then later that night it hit me.  (Actually is was 2 AM.)  Could I use The Google Calendar to sync up two different Outlook (Exchange) Calendars?   A few minutes on the web reading and YAHOO, the answer is yes. 

Here is how I do this…   You will need:

• Two computers running XP or higher. 

Note:  Google doesn’t support 64 bit XP (at this time).  To be honest I am not sure if it will work on 64 bit anything as my computers are running 32 bit Windows 7.

• Office 2003 or Office 2007 (I tried Office 2010 Beta but it wouldn’t work.)
• Install Google Outlook Sync on each computer

When installing the Outlook Sync set the software to two way sync. 

I set my Sync time to every 15 minutes.

As long as each machine is logged in with Outlook running, my calendars are synchronized.  Every 15 minutes District A computer will sync to the Google Calendar.  Then District B computer will do the same.

In other words if I schedule an appointment at the Elementary District it will be transferred to the Google Calendar every 15 minutes.  Then that appointment will be transferred to the High School District every 15 minutes.

It is a bit of a pain but it works much better than what I was doing.  

Now if I could only get one of these companies to take care of my Task and Contacts life would be even better.