If you’ve ever visited The Ultimate Music Ed Book List, you know that it’s a Google Sheet with a bunch of different columns for Children’s Literature for the music classroom as well as a few other tabs for Collections and Professional Development books. I kinda love looking at it. But I use Google Sheets for more than The Ultimate Music Ed Book List. It is also how I keep track of concepts, where I keep a curriculum map, how I keep track of lesson plans, and how I keep my folk song database. It is also where I keep all of the ideas I want to blog about, presentations, and things I’m working on for “Mrs. Stouffer’s Music Room”. I even use it to keep track of sessions I need to grade for the Michigan Music Conference. I thought I’d give you a glimpse of how I use Google Sheets for ALL my organizational needs.
Why Sheets?
It’s internet based. You can access it anywhere, you can look at previous versions, and if you aren’t looking to do number crunching, it’s a great application for all those things. Admittedly, I’m not one for number crunching so I can’t speak much to the powers in that department, but for organizing other things, it’s just what I need.
But it is sortable by column which is incredibly helpful. For example, in TUMEBL, you can sort by culture, by genre, by language, or use. You can look for a specific person alphabetically. It’s been so helpful when I create a book round up post instead of having to scroll through all 3900+ entries. You can also sort numerically so you can look for the most recent publications.
The one thing I DON’T love, is that there is no native Google font that is music notation so for song lists I have to use text not notation. Snippet doesn’t work with Sheets.
Folk Song Database
It’s hard to get a good show of what this really looks like because there are so many columns, but this is a great place to keep a list of all of the songs you use. While I do keep a song list that I can look at in my Curriculum Planner, this is a little more detailed where I can get the full run down. For me, the song list functions as the 1st stop while this is the 2nd. Once I see songs I want to look at, I go here to see what it really looks like. I need both tools for different reasons. This also includes more detailed analysis,
Curriculum Documents
This is a great place to store curriculum maps and lesson plans. I like to use this to make sure I have access to my documents wherever I am. I also keep them in a personal drive which I share with a work drive because then I have access even if I change jobs so I won’t lose all my work.
The Ultimate Music Ed Book List
The book list – A screenshot just can’t do it justice. Check it out here.
Mrs. Stouffer’s Music Room
In some weird twist that I didn’t know until l looked for this post, I have 23 different tabs for Mrs. Stouffer’s Music Room to keep me organized. Apparently that’s my number. One for planning blog posts, one to plan social media posts, keep track of books for when I do posts for AAPI History Month, old tabs to refer back to, and things I’m working on. This is an example of one of my tabs. This is where I’m keeping track of some books for next May when I will share more AAPI books. I even use it to plan presentations, using it to create an outline vs. an actual outline form as well as products I’m working on.
Google Sheets works for me because I can add extra columns, tabs, and rows for when my brain needs more space. It’s easier to sort and search rather than a document and there are definitely uses for the classroom!
I hope this has given you some ideas! I’d love to know what you use Google Sheets for. Leave a comment and let me know!
