It’s that crazy time of the year for music teachers when students are getting sick, canceling, rescheduling, and requiring extra lessons before that upcoming festival or studio recital. If you’re adding a large number of one-time events to your schedule, how can you do it quickly, without the need to go through the front door of your teaching website?
If you’re a Firefox user, you can quickly add a bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar so you can add an event with only one click. Here’s how to do it:
If you haven’t yet got a copy of Firefox, you can download it here. Firefox is a free browser, and an open-source project of the Mozilla Corporation that grew out of the original Netscape Navigator that you may remember from the 90’s.
Next, you’ll need to make sure you can see your Firefox bookmarks toolbar, which usually appears just underneath the command line where you type in addresses. If you don’t already see the bookmarks toolbar, follow this sequence of menus:
View –> Toolbars –> Bookmarks Toolbar
Make sure the Bookmarks Toolbar has a check mark beside it.
Now log into your teacher’s site and go to the Add Event page at the following address:
https://www.musicteachershelper.com/teacher/calendar.php?view=add¶m=single
Click and hold the blue treble clef logo on the tab that contains the Add Event page, drag it to the bookmarks toolbar and presto, you have a one-click bookmarklet that takes you straight to the page for creating a new event next time you click on it.
Now that you have the bookmarklet installed on your Firefox browser, there’s even more that you can do. With your mouse, right-click on the bookmarklet and click on Properties. From here, you can change the name that appears on your bookmarks tab and add tags or keywords as well. You can even use the same technique to add separate bookmarklets for other commonly used MTH pages to speed up your scheduling, lesson reconciling, and invoicing.
About the Author
Chris Foley is a pianist, teacher, examiner, adjudicator, and blogger based in Oakville, Ontario. He currently teaches at the Royal Conservatory of Music where he also serves as head of the voice department at the Conservatory School. As a member of Toronto's Tapestry New Works Studio Company, he has coached and performed in numerous workshops and performances of contemporary opera. In 2005, he started the Collaborative Piano Blog, which has grown to become one of the most well-known blogs about classical music. He has also made numerous media appearances, including playing piano for the first two seasons of Bathroom Divas (a reality show about opera singers), an interview about teaching piano to adult beginners on CBC Television's Living in Toronto, an interview in the Toronto Star about video games and music education, and an upcoming commercial for RCM Examinations.
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