It can be a struggle for parents to juggle their kids’ school events, games and conferences and it’s becoming increasingly common for parents to use web services to manage family calendars. But schools still remain stubbornly disconnected from parents online. While more and more schools are turning to the web as a platform, less than 5% of schools, both public and private, are offering parents internet school calendars. School Calenders Now, an initiative devoted to helping schools share their internet calendars with parents, is a partnership between Intand, which helps schools manage their calenders online, and Cozi, an online family calendar, scheduling service and social network. The initiative is billed as a way to help schools find a budget-friendly and easy way to make Internet school calendars available to parents. We previously reviewed Cozi here.
Through Intand, schools can publish their basic annual Internet school calendar at no cost. These calendars can also be synced up to calendar and scheduling programs used by consumers, including the Cozi’s Family Calendar, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and Apple’s iCal, giving parents automatic access to updates in a school’s calendar when schedules change.
School Calendars Now is embarking on a marketing campaign to let parents vote (on their site) to have their school’s official Internet calendar made available and can also notify other parents via e-mail to participate. School Calendars Now will tally the votes for each school and make requests to schools on behalf of all parents. The initiative seems like a good way to encourage schools to connect more efficiently with parents via technology (and to address an under-served market for Cozi and Intand).
Other competitors to Cozi include CalendarFly and MyFamily.com.