Flat for Education Resource Library

Flat for Education, an amazing web-based notation program sold by MusicFirst, recently announced a powerful new and updated feature - the Resource Library. This collection of sample resources includes 3 categories - worksheets, composition assignments, and performance assignments. The folks at Flat have really created something useful here, and anyone who uses Flat should check out these assignments to see whether they might be useful to use with their students.

To access the Resource Library, click on the Resource Library option in the left hand navigation menu of your Flat for Education account. There you will see two items in a drop down menu - Assignments and Tools. In the Assignments tab, you will see 3 categories - worksheets, composition assignments, and performance assignments.

If I were still teaching middle school, I would most likely start out with this feature by using the music theory worksheets. Flat for Education has uploaded 9 worksheets to get you started. You can easily customize these worksheets, using them basically as templates, or you can use them as is. All you need to do is click “Add to My resources” next to the worksheet you’d like to use, then click on “Use in class” and then you can select the class or classes to which you want this assignment to be copied. Next, you will have the option to select a publication date (the default publication date is “now”); Select a due date; Assign students (either all students of a class or select a few of them).

If you are adding assignments to numerous classes at a time, you can set the same publication (and/or due date) for all classes using the dedicated checkbox, then click on Publish and that’s it! Your assignment will appear fore your students in the chosen class(es).

The included sample worksheets are great and were created by the Flat for Education team and a group of teachers who use Flat regularly in their teaching. The worksheets appear basically as quizzes - with pre-made questions ready to go. I chose the Harmony worksheet to try out, and it’s great. It had 12 questions included, and you can preview each question by clicking on it. You can rearrange the order in which they appear, and if you click on “Edit worksheet” at the top of the questions, you can edit each question, add your own custom questions, and delete questions if you don’t want them to appear.

I LOVE the workflow that Flat has created because it takes away all of the common difficulties associated with creating worksheets in notation programs. If you use Flat already, I STRONGLY recommend checking this out today. If you use another notation program and would like to give Flat for Education a try, just fill out this demo request form and MusicFirst will get you set up right away!