School Calendar for Windows

School Calendar is an attractive program that allows users to track multiple school schedules. Although we liked its design, we had trouble getting a sense of who the program is made for and how it could be most effectively used.

At its heart, School Calendar is similar to many other scheduling applications we've seen, with a variety of different calendar views, the ability to schedule reminders, and so on. The program's interface is quite sleek and is reminiscent of Office 2007 products; our first impression was positive. Once we started exploring School Calendar, however, we got a little confused. The program allows users to add what it calls resources, which can include teacher, student, or class names. Users can then view a separate schedule for each resource, which is nice, but something seemed to be lacking when it came to organization; there is no way to link individual students or teachers to a particular class name, for example, or even label people as students or teachers. Users can select an avatar for each resource, which helps, but we'd rather be able to label them. Lessons can be added to each resource's schedule and there's a tuition-tracking feature, which makes it seem that the program would be well-suited for teachers who give music lessons and other independent educators. Our main issue with the program was that it seemed like it could be useful, but neither the program itself nor its Help file explained what sort of setting it was really meant for.

School Calendar has a 14-day trial period. It installs desktop icons without asking and leaves files behind upon removal. We recommend this program to tutors and other independent educators.