Leveraging Google Sheets to make our Music Class Chrome Labs Song Maker Project better!

My job is difficult, and tends to be as much administration, paperwork, and planning as it is actually teaching kids. When our department got halved years ago and the remaining half of us were left to try and do the already overwhelming jobs of more people, I burnt out quickly. In building myself back up and trying to do the best I could for my kids and my program, I fell to creating systems to try and simplify and automate as much as possible. Over the years I have built some very deep systems with Google Sheets, and they have all helped my immensely!

With the Virus, and bouncing back and forth between in-person learning and remote, I have been yet again completely overhauling my curriculum, and have again fallen on Google Sheets to make my work manageable.

The following is a link to a video about how I used Google Sheets and Form Mule to make a composition project for my kiddos work both in class, and remotely! I wanted them to write songs using the musical elements we’ve been learning, and using the Chrome Labs Song Maker sequencer. They learned how to use it pretty quickly, but the “saving” function on Song Maker only creates a link that you need to copy and do something with. I created a Google Form in their Google Classroom assignment, along with a link to Song Maker so they had everything in one place. They just needed to write their song, copy the link, and paste it into the form. I collected e-mail addresses and took all the rest of the info I needed from my student info sheet I build at the beginning of each year. When they submit the form, their link and all their info goes into the Sheet, they get an automatic e-mail from Form Mule with their link so that they have it in their e-mail folder to look back on, and I can comment and grade it within the sheet and send another Form Mule e-mail manually that includes my comments, as well as the highest grade they’ve earned (if they submitted multiple times, it chooses the highest score and sends that to them).

This system went swimmingly well, and was the only reason I managed to keep up with the submissions and listening and grading throughout this project! My kids did an amazing job, and I even shared the sheet the their teachers to brag on my awesome students a bit. The teachers seemed to really enjoy it also. Here is a link to the video showing how I set all of this up: https://youtu.be/aUS-objXR2k