TME Tuesday - The Database

If you clicked on this blog looking for a new TME idea, I'd like to send you to the website where you can find some TME ideas. Thanks ~ mj

Forgive me today as I move from my usual Tuesday presentation of a therapeutic music experience (TME) to something related, but not the same...

Today, I would like to speak about my TME database. It is a work in progress and is constantly evolving as I continue to write and learn more and more TMEs. This is a current topic of interest for me since I am spending more and more of my time organizing my file as I am trying to fill up time without access to my documentation format and cannot access the email program in my office. So, I am going through my TME file and am linking all of the TMEs to my excel database.

I use Excel to organize my TMEs. I only picked that program because I understand it, and I can sort it quickly (I REALLY like that function!!).

So, here is what I do to organize my TMEs for music therapy.

Title
Goal Areas
Author/Composer
TME Development

Every TME that I have has a title. Sometimes the title is cute like "Frog Frenzy," and other times it's not - "Instrument Identification." If I have a TME that has the same title as another one, I start numbering them - "Hello (72)." This is the first level of sorting.

In the "goal area" portion of the database, I put all of the primary, secondary, and tertiary goals that are part of the TME. So, a typical goal box would include the following: impulse control; gross motor development; fine motor development; social awareness; academic concepts - number recognition; expressive language; receptive language; completion of multi-step directives. This allows me to organize based on typical goals that I would use with my clientele.

The author/composer box allows me to keep track of my own compositions as well as the ideas that I have learned from other people. If I use a song that was composed by someone else, I put all the source information into this box. If it's just me, I just place my name in the box. That way I can identify the author or composer of the song/TME with just a glance at the TME.

If the song/music was composed by someone else, but I wrote the TME plan that identifies how to use the music in a therapeutic environment, I indicate this in the last box. If someone else wrote the TME plan, I place their name in the box titled "TME Development." That way, I am respecting the intellectual property of others the way I would like them to respect my property.

My TME file is a work in progress - all of the time. I don't think that I will ever finish it - that, at least, is my hope.

How do you organize the things you do?

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