Doodle Scheduling

I was first introduced to the concept on Doodle in high school when we used it to sign up for tutoring hours for classes.

I always have been a fan of this application due to the fact that it is a great way to stay organized and have a personalized time slot to sign up for something and ensure that you will get the support you need from your teacher. Not only is it a good way for students to stay organized, but also teachers because it allows them to personalize time slots for sign ups that work with their busy schedule.

What is Doodle?
Doodle is an online scheduling tool that allows users to select a date as well as time slot to sign up and meet with people. This app allows the creator of the poll to set designated times and dates for users to give feedback and sign up for a time slot.

Anyone can create a free Doodle account by signing up with their email. Once your account is made, you are ready to create your Doodles!

When creating a Doodle, users are taken through three steps to set up their poll.

• What's the Occasion: Users are taken to a form where they are asked to fill out the title, location, and description of the event that participants will be signing up for. 

• What Are the Options: This next step is where the creator personalizes his or her Doodle. Users are given a calendar where they can highlight the desired dates for the event. Next to the calendar is form where the creator of the poll can set times for each date in certain time increments for participants to sign up for. 

• Tell Your Participants Who You Are: Before finalizing the poll, the creator fills out one last form that tells his or her name and email. 

Once the poll is created, you hit finish and then are able to send out your Doodle to participants in it. Once the participants receive the invitation, they are free to pick a slot and sign up with their name and email!

Doodle will send the creator of the poll a calendar synced to the participants responses so that the creator has an organized calendar of date, times and people they are to meet with.

Uses for Doodle

I would use Doodle in my classroom for involving families in their child's school lives. I can create Doodle sign up sheets and email them out to the families of the students to sign up for school events. These events could include conferences, volunteering or any event that I would like if my students guardians to showed up to to support. By involving the families, I will be able to form stronger relationships with my students because I will learn more about them from getting closer to their family as well.

For upper elementary students, I could use Doodle for my students to sign up to do group presentations during class time. This will help not only to organize my students and myself but it will also help to give them some freedom and independence in their work to learn how to start handling that.

I could also use Doodle in regards to planning meetings with my colleagues. This is a good way to organize a bunch of busy teachers to bring them all together to collaborate and come up with ideas to help better the students of the school. By having a schedule poll, it allows for me to figure out which dates and times work best for me fellow teachers to meet and plan together. 

Experts Opinions
The Chronicle of Higher Education had George Williams share his uses of Doodle as a teacher. Williams described that Doodle is the perfect way to find the best times for committee meetings.

Williams has tried all different types of scheduling apps, but describes in detail how Doodle is superior to all those apps. The author goes through describing, in depth, how to navigate Doodle for first time users.

Some of the advantages to Doodle he shares are that it can be used online or in the app, users can create multiple options and time slots in polls for users to vote on and sign up for, and it is very easy to send, receive and give feedback to these polls.

MyDoodle allows for users to navigate the responses to these polls and signup sheets that is very user friendly. The creator of a specific Doodle can receive a calendar synced with all of the responses, making it easy to see which meetings are when and who will be attending.

Why Doodle?
Doodle is a great way to stay organized and plan meeting times with multiple parties. It is simple to navigate and create polls and calendars.

This app is a wonderful way for me to stay organized as a teacher, and plan events and conferences as a teacher with the families of my students.

As a teacher, I would most likely use Doodle to help me with creating meeting times with my fellow teachers to collaborate and come up with ideas to help better the students of the school and all they get out of their school day for the years to come.

References 
Williams, G. (2009, September 24). Scheduling: Using Doodle to find the best time for a committee meeting. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/scheduling-using-doodle-to-find-the-best-time-for-a-committee-meeting/22724

Easy scheduling. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://doodle.com/