If you are a music teacher one of the questions that we have all had to ask ourselves is how do I keep teaching music through the quarantine?
Types of Video Services for Teaching Music
There are many different options that we can look at for teaching music through the quarantine. The first and most important is to get setup through a video chatting services. There are a number of very popular ones. I will mention a few below…
- Skype – Skype is a popular platform to using for teaching music through the quarantine. Click here to download Skype.
- FaceTime – The difficult thing about FaceTime is that you and your student both need to own a Mac device.
- Zoom – Another great video service. The one thing that is interesting with using Zoom is that this application has a white board function that can be used. Click here to download Zoom.
- Google Hangouts – This the device that I use. And I will touching on that in more detail below. However many of these tips in this article can be used whether or not you use Google Hangouts or another service. Click here to download Google Hangouts.
How to Setup Appointments on Google Hangouts Through Google Calendar
It is very helpful with whatever system you use to be able to setup recurring appointments with your students. That is because it will make it easier to switch between students and keep your lessons organize.
If you are wanting to find out about how to do this online through Skype or Zoom you can click on the links provided.
For Google Hangouts, one of the functions that I like to use is having Google Calendar to set up appointments.
- To do this I go log into my gmail account and switch to the google calendar.
- Click on your calendar to make an appointment and add a title to your appointment and time.
3. Click on the button that says “More Options”. From here you can add in can set your Google Calendar to repeat weekly. Also under conferencing you can add “Hangouts”. You can also add the email of your parent so they can get a email notification of your lesson. Once that is all setup you will have a calendar invite to easily access all your students on your schedule.
4. Once this is completed you can very easily at lesson time from your calendar click on the appointment and then “Join Hangout”. At that point you will automatically be able to join that google link without having to keep track of everyone’s account information and the time of everyone’s lesson because everything will be located in there.
How to Keep Teaching Music Through Quarantine – Setup Lesson Notes
Another hurtle that can come with online lessons is making sure that your students can easily access their lesson notes. However, if you take online lesson notes the student, parents, and you can remember what is being assigned. For that I’ve been using Google Documents. But of course this could also be done through email. This is just the method I prefer to use.
- To do this login into your gmail account and then switch to google documents.
2. Next start a new Google Document.
3. From here you can list what scales, songs, and theory assignment you are expecting your student to do that week.
How to Teach Music Theory with Quarantine
One of the things I find helpful is that if my student has a theory book that they are already using they can take a picture of their lesson notes for me to mark. However, if you don’t already have a theory book for your students I’ve included below some links to some of the sheets I have created for use in my music lesson. These are available at Teachers Pay Teachers.
I hope this has all been helpful. If you have any questions I would love to hear from your make sure to place a comment below so that we can all help each other adjust to these new times.
I hope you all stay healthy in this time and this helped to show you how to keep teaching music through quarantine. Make sure to check back often for more piano and vocal lessons for your musical adventure.
Linnea Loves Music
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Piano Note Names and Finger Numbers
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