I’ve seen many improvements in Music Teachers Helper in the past year, and the File Upload Area is one of them. Often, the improvements have clearly been in direct response to teacher suggestions. That’s one great thing about this service–your ideas are listened to.
I don’t know how many teachers requested the file upload area, but I know I was hoping for something of that kind, after I started emailing recordings to students (see A Great Teaching Tool from 10/28).
The File Upload area is a great idea with real potential. I haven’t had time to really work it into my routine yet, but if you haven’t tried it, let me tell you some of the ways you can use it to save time and provide more service and value to your students.
If you have used it, I’m probably not alone in wanting to hear from you about how you are using it, and how well it works for you. Just add a comment at the end of this article.
The Where and How of It
The File Area is on the submenu of the “Student” tab. That’s where you can upload a file for your students’ use, and it can be a word processing file, a picture, recording, movie, music software file, a PDF file–just about any kind of useful file to share.
You can either have the file available to everyone in the Resources of your home page, or you can select which of your students have access to it. They can get to it via their “Home” tab menu.
The Benefits
What’s great about this is that you can upload recordings, photos, sheet music, etc., and store it there. When it’s time for a student to have a copy of one of these, you can just add them to the list of those who can access that file. It can save on preparation for teaching, avoiding finding originals, making copies, and can make available materials such as recordings, photos or videos, that you probably wouldn’t give a student at a lesson.
It’s perfect for uploading class lists, handouts, and recordings–including music to learn, a recording of the student at a recital, or a sample from a CD of a professional playing a bit of the music the student is learning, to put it in context. Hopefully you will not succumb to ripping off a CD which students should be purchasing–but a sample could serve to encourage them to own the CD themselves and study it.
The Catch?
A few of my students have had trouble downloading files from the File Area to their machines, and I’m trying to sort out why–for example, a few had Macs and didn’t have Windows Media on their machine, but that was easily remedied. Others had firewalls which seemed to trouble them. My guess is that these problems may have to do with their own computers or browsers, but any feedback you’d like to offer from your experience would be helpful. Judging from this past year working with MTH, I’m sure that if there’s any problem to be ironed out with this feature, it will be!
