Smartphones for All: Preprint chapter – Calendars.pdf

I’ve updated the preprint of my book chapter on Calendars. You can read the PDF for free, my September presentation to the Down Syndrome association has other preprints.

This is one of my favorite chapters – iOS Calendars are a great tool for Explorers (and Guides as well). From the Key Points section (I’m adding these to all the chapters):

• The Calendar is a key tool to help Explorers learn and practice the fundamental life skill of planning.
• iPhone Cloud calendars are a huge improvement over paper calendars for all Explorers. They can be managed by Guides and they support sharing and alerts. They are always at hand. Explorers will lose paper calendars, but few will lose their iPhones.
• To support an Explorer’s use of a Calendar a Guide needs to use an iPhone Calendar themselves. They need to demonstrate use.
• When an Explorer asks when an event is, there’s always one answer – “It’s on your calendar”.
• Explorers can start with a simple Calendar managed by a Guide with event alerts. In time most will learn to add events, to work with Family Calendar Sharing (or the non-family equivalent), and to manage invitations.
• There is a longstanding and complicated Apple bug with Calendar invitations. If you send an iPhone calendar invitation to someone and they don’t get it you’ve run into the bug. There’s nothing you can do, Apple has to fix this. It’s just useful to know the bug exists. With luck you’ll never see it.
• It’s possible to substitute Google’s Calendar for Apple’s iCloud Calendar and still use the base iPhone Calendar.app. This can be a good option for a Guide who is invested in Google Calendar but it’s technically trickier.

As always with preprints don’t worry about the typos and grammar blunders.

I’m mostly done with new chapters, moving to rewrites and updates. Editing on the way …