Helpful Music Teacher Digital Organization Hack: Tab Groups in Google Chrome

 

If your music teaching schedule looks anything like mine, you’re bouncing from grade to grade all day. This digital organization strategy uses Google Chrome, which you probably already have on your computer, and is a complete lifesaver for when you teach multiple different classes back to back! Take a look through this guide with pictures (click on any of them to make them bigger if you want a closer look!) to find out how you can use this hack yourself.

What are Tab Groups?

Simply, tab groups group your tabs together (and colour code them -  who doesn’t love colour coding?), so it’s a bit of a mini window within your window. You can expand and minimize the entire tab group at once, so you can have 20+ tabs ready to go, but not all up in your face confusing you about what comes next.

How do you add a tab to a tab group?

When you right click a tab in Google Chrome, one of the options that comes up will be “Add tab to new group”. Click that, and you’ll get a choice of colours and be able to name the group whatever you want.

How does this work in the classroom?

The first thing I do every morning is open up my daily schedule in Google Slides (I have a slide for each class that I project that just shows them what our schedule is for that day). I add this to its own group called “Schedule” – it’s always red!

Then, I go through my schedule slide by slide, opening all the links I will need for each class. When I open the first link for the grade, I create a new group named after that grade/group of grades that is doing that lesson

Then, as I open more tabs, I can drag them into the group (they will get the coloured outline of that group when they are added into the group)

Once I’m done opening the links for one grade group’s classes, I click on the name of the group (in this case, K12). This will minimize the group – see how it makes things neat and tidy?

 

 

Now, when I get to my first Kindergarten, Grade 1, or Grade 2 class for the day, I click K12. All the links I need for that group are right there, ready to go! When I’m done with them, I click it again and the links minimize. Then, I can close the entire group after the last class I teach in that group for the day.

This is such a little thing, but it seriously upped my organization game when I learned it! I hope it can help you out as well. Happy teaching!