Thing #6

I am trying to get organized this summer and decided to take a look at Backpack. I really liked the calendar aspect since my household schedule is very hectic with athletic schedules, boy scout meetings, camps, and just the everyday "little stuff" that goes on. The calendar creates color coded schedules for each person so that you know who needs to go where. I really like that since both of my sons names are similar and I have on occasion mixed up who had a ball game just glancing at our calendar. It will also text you a reminder if you set it up.
For school, the librarian could post class usage schedules and a teacher could view it and make plans before she called to reserve the library for certain periods. Our librarian could also use the calendar to email reminders to the teachers about their scheduled times the day before or when ever he wanted to remind them. It has ome pretty neat features.
Also at the high school level with the many different athletic teams a compacted sports schedule could be made and posted for all to see. There are features that would allow many users to input information and color code it. The coaches could place their own schedules here and revise it when there were rain outs for everyone to know when and where games would be made up! This way maybe coaches could try and schedule on days that did not conflict with other sporting events.
Back pack will also help you with to do lists, share info with specific groups instead of mass emails, have group discussions on the message board, and a newsroom that lets you know when someone adds or changes information
At first I thought that this would be great because it said sign up for FREE!!! But I went back to look a little closer to sign up and saw at the top in tiny words... sign up and pricing. :( For an individual it is only seven dollars a month and it will email you or text you reminders if you would like. For groups it ranged from 24-99 dollars a month. You can try it for "Free" for 30 days to see if you like it but then have to start paying at the end of that period.
There is a "free plan" that does include 2 users and 5 pages, but no calendar, message boards, or file sharing.
Well, I won't be using it since the calendar is not included but it really had me excited at first and I think it would be a great tool but not for me right now. Any way, I will keep searching to find something besides my credit union calendar that is always falling apart by the end of the year!!! If anyone has information on some calendars that work for them just let me know!! :)