- School calendars are sometimes shared as PDF recordsdata, prolonged written paperwork, and even photographs.
- I used AI to show my faculty’s PDF calendar into one thing I might add to my Google Calendar.
Anyone accountable for a school-aged youngster has handled the nightmare activity of the varsity calendar. School calendars are sometimes formatted as a PDF, picture, or Word doc — and are sometimes extremely mobile-hostile. Trying to seek out it on the varsity’s web site or in your e-mail (why do faculties ship all the pieces as attachments?! ugh!) is a nightmare when you could lookup whether or not your youngsters have faculty on President’s Day.
If you have by no means been caught slackjawed when your youngster informs you that they’ve a half day that day, I salute you. The remainder of us, we’re out right here sweating and scrambling and dedicating 30% of our mind cells to juggling a college calendar together with the after-school actions calendar, the infinite varieties that must be stuffed, ensuring that the yellow shirt is washed earlier than the colour day of Spirit Week. (This work, in fact, is extra usually performed by mothers).
I perceive that public faculties are within the enterprise of teaching, not internet design. Revamping the clunky calendar codecs and web sites should not a prime funding precedence. So I’m able to roll up my sleeves and do it myself.
Well, form of. I would like AI to do that for me.
I used to be impressed final week by Dan Seifert, a former reporter at The Verge and now Google worker, who posted on Threads about how he used AI to take the Word doc together with his kid’s faculty calendar and pop these dates into his Google cal with only a few strikes.
Post by @danseifert
View on Threads
This, to me, was the dream.
Seifert described how he did this utilizing his Google Pixel telephone. I reached out to Seifert, however he wasn’t licensed to talk on the file intimately about this. Since I haven’t got a Pixel, his precise technique wasn’t going to work for me, however I’m grateful for his inspiration.
After about two hours, three separate LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude), and lots of frustration, I lastly was capable of get this to work. To take a look at additional, I attempted out my strategies for 2 different mates and their faculty calendars and obtained it to work for them, too. Some tweaking was required to cope with one weirdly formatted calendar, however I used to be nonetheless capable of get it there. Triumph!
Since I’ve suffered, I’m happy to spare you all and inform you how I did it so you may, too.
Just a few caveats:
- I’m not a grasp of AI by any means, and there could also be a significantly better approach to do that. I’m joyful to listen to any recommendations you may need to streamline it.
- I used to be utilizing the free variations of those LLMs; its doable that the extra highly effective paid variations might do that higher.
Here have been my steps:
Step 1: Get your faculty calendar. This is usually a PDF, a screenshot of the calendar, or a copy-and-paste of all of the textual content from a written doc.
Step 2. Use ChatGPT to learn the PDF or picture and switch it into plain textual content.
Prompt: “I’ve a PDF of a college calendar with a listing of dates. Please take this PDF and switch it right into a textual content checklist of all of the dates and their descriptions.”
Step 2. Turn that plain textual content right into a Google Calendar-friendly CSV file. This may take just a few tries to therapeutic massage it to get it within the precise proper format for Google Cal. You may need to ask it to verify the dates go first.
Prompt: “Can you’re taking that checklist and switch it right into a CSV file with the dates within the YYYY-MM-DD format that is able to import into Google Calendar?”
Step 3. Download the .txt model it gives, or copy and paste it right into a textual content editor.
Tip: I discovered that Claude.ai was higher at this step than ChatGPT or Gemini. Claude might additionally create a downloadable model, which saved me a step of getting to stick and reserve it myself.
Step 4. In Google Calendar, create a brand new calendar with the + signal subsequent to “Other calendars” (situated within the left rail when you’re on a desktop). Name it “School calendar” or no matter.
Tip: Share it along with your companion to allow them to by no means declare they did not know that random Tuesday was closed for “Teacher Development Day.”
Step 5. Import your .txt file into Google Calendar. Go to Settings > Import & export > Import. Upload the file out of your laptop and choose the calendar for import. If it offers an error message or says 0 occasions added, you may want to return and fiddle with the formatting once more from Step 2.
Step 6. Be glad with your self for being a grasp of effectivity. Congratulations.
Just a few issues you need to know
This wasn’t so simple as I hoped. It took somewhat trial and error, and among the LLMs could not do all the steps on their very own, which is in fact, extremely irritating.
For some motive, Gemini fared the worst of all of those at having the ability to do that. It additionally surprisingly gave me the flawed details about the way to use Google merchandise. For instance, it instructed me at first it might learn a PDF in my Google Drive, however then later instructed me it wasn’t allowed to entry Google Drive recordsdata.
It additionally gave me unhealthy directions once I requested about the way to add all these dates to Google Calendar (it urged making a single occasion and placing all of the plain textual content within the description) as an alternative of telling me the way to import a file. I assumed that Google’s Gemini can be higher at serving to with different Google merchandise, however not fairly.
I think about that Google (and others) might be making this workflow a lot simpler very quickly. This looks as if the best use of AI as a productiveness device: “I’ve a doc in my Gmail or Drive with a listing of dates. Please add all these dates to my calendar.” That’s the magic that you really want AI to do.
And sure, there are corporations on the market particularly working to assist households handle this annoying activity of managing the calendar. Ohai is an app geared toward mothers that acts as an assistant that may assist with calendar administration in addition to different duties (it is $27 a month and appears promising, though I have never examined it myself).
There’s additionally the Skylight calendar, a $300 digital calendar contact display machine (there’s additionally a $600 bigger wall measurement popping out this fall). My editor, Hayley Peterson, simply obtained one for her household and says she loves it.
But I’ve a sense that each one this trouble might be moot by the beginning of the subsequent faculty 12 months. When the brand new iPhones have their fancy new Apple Intelligence and different AI fashions have grown much more highly effective, I think about that each one this might be so simple as just a few faucets on our telephones, with no trouble of importing a .txt file (shudder).
I do know persons are anxious that AI may change our jobs, swarm us with misinformation, and hurt us in methods we’ve not even predicted but. I’m anxious, too. I do not use AI a lot at work (I wrote all these phrases with my very own two fingers). But I’m additionally actually, actually joyful to make this device really do one thing that improves my life on this small approach.
