For the last few years, I’ve viewed Facebook as a necessary evil. It’s an easy way to update my friends and family and vice versa. I belong to a number of personal and professional groups, including a fitness accountability group that I post in daily. I have pages for my business, and rely on other pages for info about my kids’ extracurricular activities.
But over the last few months, scrolling my Facebook feed has become an increasingly negative experience. I’m not even talking about political posts and arguments in the comment sections. What I mean is that consuming bit and pieces of other peoples’ lives has led me to question my own career, social life, accomplishments…everything. I found myself constantly living in comparison mode, and the worse it got, the more addicted to scrolling I became.
Many people have found themselves working remotely throughout the last 7 months, including music therapists and teachers. With very little notice, we had to alter our plans to be conducive to the virtual experience.
As someone who is in their early 20s, you would think that I would have an upper hand with knowledge about technology. I, unfortunately in this case, do not fit that stereotype and had to really teach myself how to make this all work for my clients and students. So, how did I do it?
I’ve found myself primarily using two applications: Zoom and iMovie. I know, it’s pretty basic, but who knew such common programs would open doors for so many virtual learning opportunities? In today’s blog post, we are going to dive a little deeper into Zoom.
Summer officially begins in just a few days, and yes, we are still virtual. As much as I had hoped that the physical doors of my studio and music therapy private practice, Music Therapy Connections, would be open by now, they are not. The safety of our team and families is our #1 priority, and the risk of COVID-19 still remains too high to resume in-person services.
So we will continue teaching lessons and facilitating music therapy sessions virtually, as well as holding our music classes via livestream. After a 10-week virtual spring music class session, I enjoyed a glorious two week break (during which I celebrated both of my children’s birthdays as well as my own!)…but now it’s time to get back into the swing.
First things first: I must preface this post by explaining that I am NOT an expert at live video. I’ve had quite a bit of practice since it rolled out last year, but I’m still awkward and nervous as all get out every single time. As uncomfortable as live video makes me, I keep getting back on the horse because I have seen how far-reaching it can be.
We all know that Facebook has all but killed organic reach for business pages, which is why I put much more time and attention into my Instagram feed these days. However, since Listen & Learn Music has a pretty decent following on Facebook (which doesn’t even touch our Music Therapy Connections reach…#goals) I want to foster those connections. And since Facebook puts a high priority on live video and allows it to reach more people organically than other kinds of posts, it only makes sense to get in front of the camera.
I put a screenshot of a recent live video at the top of this post to illustrate how it shows up in the newsfeed. (If you click on the image, it will take you to the actual video.) I’ll be referring to it in several of my quick tips, which are as follows.
A few years back, I had the privilege of creating and recording music for Model Me Kids, a company that creates modeling videos to help children with autism learn social skills. My original songs narrate the Model Me Faces and Emotions and Model Me Going Places DVDs.
Now there’s an app based on the “Faces and Emotions” DVD for both iPhone and iPad: Autism Emotion, which you can download for free in the iTunes store. It’s a great visual teaching tool for helping children learn about different emotions through photos, text, narration, and music.
The app includes four of the emotions featured in the DVD. Each emotion contains a photo slide show of a child experiencing a specific emotion, and you can play the song I wrote for each emotion as well.
I downloaded this app yesterday, and though I may be a little biased, I think it’s a great resource for enhancing my work on the topic of emotions. It’s free, so check it out for yourself…and if you use other apps to help your kiddos learn about emotions, please share!
Welcome! I’m Rachel Rambach, board-certified music therapist and creator of Listen & Learn Music — educational songs and musical materials for children. I love sharing my work with you, along with my behind-the-scenes creative process, adventures in business ownership, and life as a mom of two little ones.
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