Lesson Notes — Overview
Lesson notes are a rich text space attached to each lesson where you can write, embed tools, and leave structured feedback. Tools are interactive blocks — games, trackers, recorders, and more — that you insert directly i
What Lesson Notes Are
Every lesson in Octavia has a lesson note attached to it. You open the note from the lesson view. The note is a rich-text document where you can write anything you'd put in a handwritten lesson book: observations, homework reminders, technique notes, repertoire instructions. On top of the writing space, you can embed interactive tools that make the note come alive.
Lesson notes persist. Once written, the note stays attached to that lesson and can be viewed by the linked family in the Hub. If you look back at a student's lesson history, past notes are there.
On mobile, teachers can also open a lesson note from the mobile lessons list. The note opens in view mode first, with an option to switch into editing. This mobile note flow is available now, but the editing experience is still being refined.
Inserting Musical Symbols Inline
Lesson notes also include a lightweight Musical symbols picker for times when you want to mention a symbol in a sentence without adding a full notation block.
This is useful for short references such as:
- naming a clef in text
- adding a repeat sign or barline
- mentioning accidentals, fermatas, breath marks, or similar notation symbols
You can open the picker in two ways:
Musical symbols button. Click the orange musical symbols button in the bottom-right corner of the note editor.
Keyboard shortcut. Press Cmd/Ctrl + / while typing in the note.
The picker shows common symbols first, followed by the rest of the Unicode musical symbols list. You can also search by name if you know what you want to insert.
When you click a symbol, it is inserted directly into the text at your current cursor position. This makes it easy to write things like “Today we learned about the treble clef 𝄞 and bass clef 𝄢” without leaving the note or using the full Notation App.
Lesson Tools
Lesson Tools are self-contained resources you can drop straight into a lesson note to help a student practise one specific skill.
Inserting Tools
There are two ways to add a tool to a note:
Slash menu. Type / in the note body to open the command menu. At the top of the menu you'll see formatting commands (headings, lists, dividers, etc.) as well as an Add tool option. Selecting Add tool opens the tools submenu, where every available tool is listed. You can also reach Attachment directly from the slash menu root without going into the tools submenu.
Toolbar button. A grid icon in the note toolbar opens the tool picker — a modal showing all available tools in a grid layout. Click any tool to insert it.
Once inserted, the tool appears as a self-contained block in the note. It sits among your text, and you can place text above or below it.
Saving Tools
Most tools require you to hit Save before they become active. An unsaved tool is in a draft state — the student can see it's there, but interactive features (ticking off squares, playing a game, starting the metronome) are disabled until saved. Some tools — like the Randomise My Practice dice — are purely client-side and don't need saving.
The save step exists because tools are backed by database records. Until the record exists, there's nothing to store progress against. Once saved, the tool is live.
Deleting Tools
Tools cannot be deleted with the Backspace or Delete key. This is intentional — it prevents accidentally wiping a tool while editing nearby text. To remove a tool, hover over it to reveal the trash icon in the corner, click it, and confirm. Tools that have stored data (recordings, bingo progress, video uploads) will also delete that data when removed.
Who Sees What
Teachers (the editor view) see the full note with all tools in their interactive state. They can write, insert tools, save them, and delete them.
Parents and students see the note in read-only mode via the Family Hub. They can interact with tools that are designed for student/family participation — ticking bingo squares, playing a game, watching a recorded video — but they cannot add or remove anything.
The note reflects the current saved state. As soon as you save a tool or add text, families who open the Hub will see the updated version.
The Event Detail Panel
Every lesson note sits alongside an event detail panel — a sidebar that shows the key facts about the lesson you're currently working on: the date, time, duration, student name, and lesson location. This gives you the relevant context without needing to navigate away from the note.
You can also reach the event detail panel by clicking a lesson event directly in the calendar sidebar. Clicking on an event opens the panel, showing the event details and giving you quick access to open the note, mark attendance, or jump to the student profile. This makes the panel a natural starting point when you've found the lesson you need in the calendar view.
Viewing Lesson History
A Show history button is available within the lesson note interface. Clicking it opens the lesson history pane — a scrollable view of the text content from all previous lesson notes written for that student, displayed in reverse-chronological order.
This is one of the most practical features for day-to-day teaching. Before you start a lesson, a quick glance at the history tells you what you covered last time, what homework was set, and how recent lessons have been going — without opening each past note individually. You can refer to it mid-lesson too: it stays visible alongside the current note while you're writing.
The history pane shows the written text content of each past note. Embedded tools are not replayed in the history view, but any text you wrote around them — instructions, observations, repertoire lists — is there in full.
Next: Practice Tools