This is a guest post by Missouri teacher, Anita Byers (bio at the end). After Anita commented on one of my posts here on Piano Pantry on how she organized her music games in Evernote, I quickly asked her to share. Many thanks to Anita!
As my collection of piano games has grown the past several years, I have needed to organize them in a way that I can find a game that reinforces a certain concept without physically searching through a huge stack!
My goal for this summer was to attack the game monster and make it easy to find and use games during lessons.
I use Evernote in my studio to keep track of weekly lesson plans for each student. I am not sure why it took me so long to realize that Evernote could help organize my game inventory!
I set up a notebook in Evernote and named it “Games.” Then for each game, I added a note.
The information I typed on the note included:
- Name of the game
- Where I found or purchased the game
- Objectives of the game
I took a photo or screenshot of the game board, instructions, and cards. (This was super easy to do with my iPad).
*Note that the following three photos are part of the same note (just taken in 3 screenshots).
I used tags to make categories for each game. For example, tags I used for the Ladybug game were: grand staff, keyboard topography, music alphabet, and staff notation. This will help me as I search for games in my Evernote notebook.
For more on the benefit and power of using tags in Evernote, see Amy’s video post, Evernote: Account Features, Tagging, and More.
The image below shows a search I did for “keyboard topography.” As you can see, the list of games that I have is shown on the left. I really like that it brings up the photos!
I also took this opportunity to set up a file cabinet to store my games physically, and I added the drawer number right after the game’s name when I entered each note. My games are easy to look up in Evernote and find in their file cabinet.
This system is working great for me so far. Now, I just need to keep up with it as I add new games. It feels so good to have the pile of games organized and the game monster conquered. Thanks, Evernote!
Bonus tip from Amy: since Evernote can also house Microsoft Word, Excel, and Google Drive documents, you could even attach the digital file directly into the note or link directly to the webpage from which you found the game.
Anita Byers is the owner of Anita’s Piano Studio located in Nevada, Missouri. She currently has a full studio of 27 students. She recently retired from Nevada High School after ten years as the choir accompanist.
Amy, I am challenged with technology. I want to get started on Evernote, but don’t know how to start. How do you ” attach the digital file directly into the note or link directly to the webpage from which you found the game?”
Hi, Nancy. To attach a digital file, when you create a “new note” in Evernote, there is a image in the toolbar (similar to a Microsoft Word toolbar) that looks like like a paperclip. Click on that and it will open your file explorer on your computer and you can find and attach whatever file you want. To link directly to a webpage, you can either simply copy and paste the link into the body of a note. If you have the web clipper extension on your chrome browser, you can use it to clip links directly into Evernote, or you can use the she “share” feature on your smart phone if you have one to save/send a page off your browser on your phone into Evernote. If your just getting started with evernote, I would highly recommend going through my post/video seris. Evernote Part 1, Evernote Part 2 (the web clipper), and Evernote part 3. I hope this helps!
Hello,
These are great organizing tips. Can you share your favorite sources for games? I am interested in online games, too, because I am currently through Zoom.
Hi, Rebecca. Sure! I’m happy to share. To start off, I keep a master list of “Manipulatives and Games” for Piano Lessons. You can access that list as well click HERE!
Off the top of my head, I have gotten a lot of games over the years from Joy Morin’s ColoinMyPiano.com site, Susan Paradis’s website, and Jennifer Fink’s Pianimation, and Anne Crosby Gaudet’s Musicdiscoveries.shop.
TCW (Three Cranky Women) Resources published by Kjos have a ton of amazing games as well as Keys to Imagination.
Lastly, you might also check out the new Top Music Marketplace!
I hope this helps!
Thanks so much for your speedy reply about games! I’ll check these out!
Hello,
These are great organizing tips. Can you share your favorite sources for games? I am interested in online games, too, because I am currently through Zoom.