Link Post
Robby Burns
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation ...
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

drafts

Holiday Gift Guide 2022, with David MacDonald and Craig McClellan

I've got a new podcast episode out, and while it's probably not in time for most of your shopping, the stuff we discussed are amongst my favorite things of 2022 and are certainly great ideas to treat yourself with down the road, if not sooner.

Show regulars Craig McClellan and Dr. David MacDonald join the show to talk about stuff we like.

Subscribe to the Blog...

RSS | Email Newsletter

Subscribe to the Podcast in...

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Support Music Ed Tech Talk

Become a Patron!

Buy me a coffee

Thanks to my sponsors this month, Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks.

Show Notes:

Music Ed and Tech News

Books

Software

Services

Hardware and Gadgets

Bags, Pens, and other Misc stuff

The Pen Addict Podcast

Pilot Metropolitan - 6 Cartridges https://www.jetpens.com/Pilot-Iroshizuku-Shin-kai-Ink-Deep-Sea-6-Cartridges/pd/34517)

JetPens.com - Pilot Iroshizuku Shin-kai Ink (Deep Sea) - 6 Cartridges

Rhodia Notepad

Plotter

Tom Bihn Bags

App of the Week:

Robby - Spring for Twitter

David MacDonald - Cleanshot X / Spaceteam (Board game version)

Craig McClellan - Timery

Music of the Week:

Robby - Carly Rae Jepsen: The Loneliest Time

David MacDonald - Béla Fleck, Mike Marshall and Edgar Meyer: Uncommon Ritual

Craig McClellan - Bonny Light Horseman: Rolling Golden Holy

Tech Tip of the Week:

Robby - Curating your social media experience

David MacDonald - Firefox add-on: Display Anchors https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/display-_anchors/

Craig McClellan - Focus Mode Updates

Where to Find Us:

Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book

David MacDonald - Twitter | Website

Craig McClellan - Twitter | Website

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

macOS Ventura, music notation software compatibility, iPad news

Robby does hot takes on macOS Ventura, iOS and iPadOS 16.1, and new iPads.

Subscribe to the Blog... RSS | Email Newsletter

Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Support Music Ed Tech Talk

Become a Patron!

Buy me a coffeeBuy me a coffee

Thanks to my sponsors this month, Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks.

Show Notes:

Reflections on the Drafts app, and their 10 Year Anniversary

One of my favorite and most depended-on apps of the past decade has been Drafts.

Developer Greg Pierce (who you can hear on this podcast episode) recently celebrated the 10 year anniversary of Drafts. I strongly recommend you check it out, even if you just use the free version.

In preparation the anniversary, Greg asked me if I could write some words about my experiences with Drafts. He featured some of my words in this promotional post, but you can read all of them below...

I remember a long road trip with my wife back in the spring of 2011. It was my turn to drive, and I was listening to the Mac Power Users to help engage my mind and stay awake. The hosts mentioned an app called Drafts that could take my spontaneous thoughts, organize them, and powerfully act on them later.

I was intrigued! When my wife took the wheel, I downloaded it immediately and began poking around. Never before had the utility of an app become so quickly apparent to me.

Of the many professional domains I juggle, my job as a middle school band director alone requires me to manage a lot of responsibility. I have to be a master teacher, performer, arranger, composer, conductor, data clerk, fundraiser, field trip planner, and more. During class, I am often managing the needs of 60 or more students in a room at once while trying to be a professional at all of those other things. Being able to tap the Drafts icon on my dock and quickly enter any thought that enters into my mind has been nothing short of life-changing. I used to be overwhelmed by my responsibilities, but through organization systems, and particularly Drafts, I have been able to take away the friction between the thoughts that grab my attention and what gets permanently saved in a computer. Drafts turns my devices into a second brain, and my rampant thoughts fade out of sight, out of mind.

The ability to perform actions on text is crucial for determining where a draft goes. Is it a message? A calendar event? A note? Task? Most of my Drafts become notes or tasks, and actions to save them as such come free with the app! But on top of this, the ability to design my own automations has made it easier to get thoughts out of drafts and into other apps on my devices, allowing me to be better organized FASTER, and to therefore have more free time to focus on the part of my job that matters: making awesome music, and connecting with my amazing students.

I love Drafts so much that I recommend it to everyone I know. I mentioned it in my book Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers, I have interviewed developer Greg on my podcast and even once bought it for all of my administrators at my school as a holiday gift. It is really worth a try, whoever you are. Drafts is simple enough to be a no-nonsense, minimalist, note-taking app for the masses while remaining customizable enough that nerds can build their own tool with it. As an educator, I appreciate experiences with low floors and high ceilings. And Drafts is exactly that.

The Music Ed Tech Talk Holiday Gift Guide, featuring Dr. David MacDonald

David MacDonald joins Robby to share their favorite books, hardware, apps, services, and musical gift ideas.

Subscribe to the Blog...

RSS | Email Newsletter

Subscribe to the Podcast in...

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Support Music Ed Tech Talk

Become a Patron!

Buy me a coffee

Show Notes:

Books

Hardware

More Hardware

Software

Services

Misc

Music of the Week

Robby - Sarah Jarosz

David - Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Tech Tip of the Week

Robby - Focus Modes

David - CopyChar.cc

Where to Find Us:

Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book

David - Twitter | Website | Blog

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

🎙Apps for Research and Remembering, with David MacDonald

Composer and teacher, David MacDonald, returns for a discussion about the apps we use for notes, research, writing, and clipping data to find later.

Other topics:

  • What kinds of work goes in which kinds of apps
  • Digital research tools
  • Kindle Paperwhite
  • Streaming / virtual teaching tools
  • Music theory YouTubers
  • Zooming in to your Mac screen
  • Quickly taking a screenshot with the Apple Pencil
  • Our favorite music and apps of the week

Show Notes:

App of the Week: Robby - Stream Deck Mobile App David MacDonald - Reincubate Camo & FiLMiC Pro

Album of the Week: Robby - Owane | Yolo EP Vol. 1 David MacDonald - Scary Pockets YouTube channel

Where to Find Us: Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
David MacDonald - Twitter | Website

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in...

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Using Drafts and TextExpander to Organize Lesson Notes

Taking notes on sectionals in the Drafts app.

I am moving more of my text notes to Drafts these days. You can read about how I use Drafts here. Drafts is a note-taking app where most of my text typing starts. When I am ready to act upon my text, the actions on the right side of the screen allow me to send it off to messages, emails, tasks, notes, social media, and more.

Generally, I use Drafts as a text-inbox, where I eventually process all of my text ideas and send them to other apps that are better suited for them. But lately, I wonder why I need to take the extra step of sending a draft to another app when Drafts is perfectly suited for organizing and searching text.

Let's take Lesson Notes, for example. When I teach a sectional, large ensemble, or private lesson, I like to take notes on what we played and what I assigned. Usually, I would type these in Drafts and then send the finished text to Apple Notes. But lately, I am just keeping it in Drafts and archiving it so that it doesn't clutter up the inbox area. Everything is in plaintext so searching my entire 7,000 draft library is way faster than searching Apple Notes. Plus, it reduces the amount of time I ever even need to open Apple Notes by 90 percent.

My "Sectionals" Workspace.

I add the tag "sectionals" to a draft where I have taken sectional notes, and I have a custom workspace that allows me to see just the drafts with that tag.

Here is how I have set up my Sectionals Workspace to include drafts with the "sectionals" tag.

Adding tags is as simple as typing them into the tag area.

Additionally, tagging them "badge" makes it so that the draft doesn't contribute to the number on the red badge of the Drafts icon. I use the badge only to inform me of drafts that need to be processed to another app.

I write most of my drafts in Markdown, which means I use "#" symbols to note levels of the heading, "**" to indicate things I want bold, etc... If you want to read more about how I use Markdown, read this post. Drafts and common web editing tools like WordPress (and even Canvas) can turn this Markdown into HTML. I only use Markdown for my sectional notes to show bullet-pointed lists and first/second-level headings. Drafts does some light formatting to help me better see this information by, for example, highlighting the headings green.

It gets tedious to retype this template for every class, so I have TextExpander snippets to do it for me. Read about how I am using TextExpander here.

In the case of the snippet below, I type "sectionalnotes" into the body of the draft and then TextExpander prompts me for the ensemble and sectional name and then automatically fills in that data, with my fill-ins and the current date.

My TextExpander snippet for Sectional Notes.

Using an action called Current UUID, I can copy a link to a draft to my clipboard and paste it in to the calendar event for whatever class, lesson, or sectional it is related to. That way, I can easily refer to it by date, using the visually friendly interface of a calendar app.

Eliminating Canvas Stress by Writing Content in Markdown

Left: A draft of a Canvas page, written in a text file on my computer. I used the Markdown syntax for headings, lists, and links. Right: What the Canvas page looks like once the text on the left is imported into the course page as HTML.

Left: A draft of a Canvas page, written in a text file on my computer. I used the Markdown syntax for headings, lists, and links. Right: What the Canvas page looks like once the text on the left is imported into the course page as HTML.

My district’s LMS of choice is Canvas, which is pretty stressful to work with. From most accounts I hear about other LMS software, Canvas is far from the worst. “You go to war with the LMS you have” I once heard.

Lately, I am writing my Canvas content in Markdown and storing it as text files on my computer.

Why?

Canvas is littered with user-hostile behaviors. Each class is a separate container. All files, pages, and assignments are quarantined, requiring multi-step procedures for sharing between courses. On top of this, the organizing tools are a mess. I am never 100 percent sure where to go. Even when I do, I have to wait for the internet to load each new thing I click on.

Instead of one file repository that all courses pull from, each class has its own separate Files area.

Instead of one file repository that all courses pull from, each class has its own separate Files area.

Canvas is equally difficult for students. All of the course pages and content are just sort of floating in space. It’s up to the teacher to link the material together meaningful, but the tools to do so are inelegant and unintuitive. My music program has resorted to a website for communicating most general information since it exposes the hierarchy of its structure to our viewers. In other words, we control where every page lives, and our students can get to any part of our site from the navigation bar at the top of the page.

The WYSIWYG web editors you see within most Canvas pages, assignments, and announcements are equally frustrating. They are clunky, the text field is tiny, the buttons for all the tools are ambiguous, and I lose my data if the page refreshes itself or I lose connection. Additionally, it’s hard to anticipate what my formatting will look like before actually clicking the save button.

Lately, I am writing my Canvas content in Markdown and storing it as text files on my computer. By editing in Markdown, I can create content in third-party apps, work with data offline, control where files are organized, search them from the Spotlight, and quickly export as HTML for input into the Canvas HTML editor when I am ready to publish.

Using Mac and iOS Native Apps

I like native applications because the good ones feel designed to look like the computing platform. For example, the forScore app on iOS uses similar navigation buttons and fonts to Apple’s own Mail, Keynote, Pages, and Notes. This way, I don’t feel like I am learning new software.

Native apps that deal with documents store files on my hard drive. I can easily organize them into my own folder system, work on them without an internet connection, open the same file in different applications, and search them from the Spotlight. Document-based apps update your file as you edit your data. Websites often lose your data when they run into issues.

I don’t write anything longer than a sentence or two into the text field of a website. Instead, I draft them inDrafts and move my work to iAWriter for longer projects. Both of these apps can preview Markdown.

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a shorthand syntax for HTML. It empowers me to draft web content without actually writing code. Skim this Markdown syntax guide to see what I mean. You can learn the basics in five minutes.

Drafts and iA Writer have one-button shortcuts to convert Markdown to formatted text or HTML. Here is an example of Markdown, and what it would look like once converted to rich text or HTML.

# Blog Post Title
Here are *three things* I want to do today.
1. Work out
2. Sit in the hot tub
3. Grill some chicken

Let me tell you more about them.

## Work out
Today I will work out on my bike. My wife once said, and I quote:
> The earlier in the day you aim to do it, the more likely it is to happen.

## Sit in the hot tub
This will be relaxing. Maybe I will listen to a podcast there. Here are some recent favorites...
- Sound Expertise
- Sticky Notes
- Upgrade

My favorite podcast player is [Overcast](https://overcast.fm).

Once an app like Drafts or iA Writer converts the Markdown to rich text, it would look like this:

A good Markdown app like iA Writer will convert the syntax to rich text for you and copy it so that you can paste it into an application like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or your website.

A good Markdown app like iA Writer will convert the syntax to rich text for you and copy it so that you can paste it into an application like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or your website.

I could have just as easily exported the resulting rich text to a Word document or Google Doc and all of the formatting would have been properly executed.

iAWriter can also export my Markdown as HTML like this:

<h1>Blog Post Title</h1>

<p>Here are <em>three things</em> I want to do today.</p>

<ol>
<li>Work out</li>
<li>Sit in the hot tub</li>
<li>Grill some chicken</li>
</ol>

<p>Let me tell you more about them.</p>

<h2>Work out</h2>

<p>Today I will workout on my bike. My wife once said, and I quote:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The earlier in the day you aim to do it, the more likely it is to happen.</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>Sit in the hot tub</h2>

<p>This will be relaxing. Maybe I will listen to a podcast there. Here are some recent favorites...</p>

<ul>
<li>Sound Expertise</li>
<li>Sticky Notes</li>
<li>Upgrade</li>
</ul>

<p>My favorite podcast player is <a href="https://overcast.fm">Overcast</a>.</p>

Because Markdown can be converted to HTML automatically, I have found it less stressful to actually write my Canvas pages, announcements, and messages to parents in Markdown and then pasting the resulting HTML into the HTML editor of Canvas. I store my Markdown files in a folder of text files, with subfolders for each course. I have favorited these folders so that they are always accessible in the iA Writer sidebar. These folders are easily accessible. Because I am writing in plaintext, the result feels much more like writing in a simple note app than it does a word processor.

iA Writer links to folders of text files on your hard drive. But it looks like a simple note app.

iA Writer links to folders of text files on your hard drive. But it looks like a simple note app.

Here is an example of a Canvas announcement intended to be shared with one of my band classes early this fall. It contains an embedded Google Form families sign as an agreement to our policies. Markdown and HTML can be written in the same document and iA Writer treats it all as HTML when you export it.

I got the HTML embed straight from the Share menu of the Google Form setup. I didn't need to know any code to make this message!

On the left: a Markdown document that contains HTML code for a Google Form embed. On the right: pasting that as HTML into the HTML editor in Canvas.

On the left: a Markdown document that contains HTML code for a Google Form embed. On the right: pasting that as HTML into the HTML editor in Canvas.

How the resulting announcement appears to students.

How the resulting announcement appears to students.

EDIT: When I wrote this post, I fogtot to add one benefit to having all of these files on your computer… even though Canvas messages don’t support formatting like headings and bold, I draft those in iAWriter too. It is SO much easier to find and re-use old emails I have sent to parents when they are searchable from my computer. Have you ever tried to search your Canvas ‘Sent’ folder? It’s terrible! Local computer copies for the win!

Learn OmniFocus Workflow Guest: October 3, 2020

I am thrilled to announce that I will be joining Learn OmniFocus as a Workflow Guest on October 3rd, 2020.

Learn OmniFocus is a website dedicated to helping others live a fulfilling and productive life with OmniFocus, complementary productivity apps, and services.

You can learn a ton from their free resources, including basics like organizing tasks into projects and assigning tags to them. They also have information on advanced features like project templating and automation.

My session will be all about how I use OmniFocus and complementary productivity apps to keep my life as a teacher and musician together. Here is the session description:

Teacher, musician, and technologist, Robby Burns will be joining us from Ellicott City, Maryland to share how he uses OmniFocus and complementary productivity apps to keep his active life on track.

Robby has been using OmniFocus since 2010. He has a long history with Apple technologies and was originally drawn to OmniFocus’ deep integration with Apple’s operating systems. He especially appreciates that the Omni Group is quick to add support for new Apple technologies.

During the LIVE session, Robby will share details of his OmniFocus setup and workflows, including:

  • How and when he uses OmniFocus on his iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

  • Adjustments that he’s made to his use of OmniFocus and complementary productivity apps since switching from in-person to virtual teaching.

  • His strategy for using tags.

  • How he uses the Forecast perspective to keep his calendar lined up with his commitments.

  • How he uses defer dates to relieve the stress of seeing too many things at once.

  • Custom perspectives that help him hone in on his most important tasks, including his “Top 3” perspective that narrows his focus to only three items.

  • How he creates OmniFocus projects based on templates stored in Drafts.

Read more and register here. The session will have a live Q/A and members can interact and share ideas. I hope to see you there!

You can become a member of Learn OmniFocus here. They have educator and student discounts. It is worth checking out if you wish to be more productive!

A free recording of the video will be made available to everyone by October 10.

Never Miss a Task, with Project Templates (OmniFocus Mini-Series)

This is the second part in my series on using OmniFocus to stay on top of my teaching responsibilities. My last post, Staying On Top Of Teaching Responsibilities With Omnifocus Perspectives, details how I use custom Perspectives to ensure that I only see the tasks that are relevant to me in particular working contexts. Today, I am going to write about how I use TaskPaper templates to make sure I don’t forget steps of commonly repeated projects.

WindEnsembleassessmentProjectinOF

Why Project Templates?

As a band director, I have tons of repeating projects. There are numerous concerts a year, field trips, musical repertoire to stuff in folders, and substitutes to prepare lessons for. Usually, the tasks in these projects are the same, and have similar due dates relative to the date of the concert, substitute, or trip.

What is TaskPaper?

OmniFocus allows users to write templates for these projects in plain text using a special syntax called TaskPaper. The TaskPaper syntax is what is used by the application by the same name. It allows users to create and maintain complex projects with checkable tasks, each of which containing tags and due dates. There are no buttons or menus, everything is typed without lifting your hands off the keyboard.

Taskpaperappwindow

A simple project in TaskPaper would use a colon after the title to bolden it and turn it into a project. Tasks are indicated by dashes, followed by spaces. And tags are indicated by an @ symbol. Therefore, a project with sub tasks and tags would look exactly like this...

Project Title:
- Task 1 @tagsarelikethis
- Task 2 @errands
- Task 3 @due(july24)

OmniFocus Projects Templates use this same syntax and have added some custom features through the use of tagging. You can read about that syntax here.

OmniFocus Projects can look as simple as the example text above. But they can also use custom placeholders which prompt you to add dynamic data. If you put a string of characters in between the symbols ‘«’ and ‘»’, OmniFocus will treat it like a variable and prompt you to provide it. This means that if tag an item with the tag @due(«dateofperformance»), I will be asked what the date of the performance is, and then OmniFocus will add that due date to any tasks with that tag.

See my Concert Template below for an example.

Concerttemplateindrafts

Notice that most of my due dates have the minus symbol and a number after them followed by ‘d,’ ‘m,’ or ‘w,’ for days, months, and weeks, respectively. This adjusts the due date relative to the date I provide OmniFocus when prompted. Here is an example. When we perform a concert, the high school we feed into usually offers help from student volunteers in their Tri-M chapter. I need to get in touch with the Tri-M President at least 14 days before the date of the concert to ensure they have enough time to prepare, so I have added a -14d to the end of the date tag for that task. OmniFocus will not bother me about the task until that time.

There is also a Defer date tag associated with that same task. I can begin working on that task up to four weeks before it is due, so OmniFocus reveals it to me four weeks in advance, but doesn’t show it as due until I can’t survive the day without having done it.

Adding Projects to OmniFocus with Drafts

You may be wondering how I am actually triggering these templates to initiate in OmniFocus. As stated above, I am storing them all in Drafts. Drafts has a feature where you can create different workspaces for different buckets of text. I store my templates in the OmniFocus Template Workspace. In the image below, you will see a template for taking my band to their annual Assessment performance.

Adjudicationtemplateindrafts

On the right side of Drafts there are some options which perform custom actions on my drafts. Users can create their own custom actions and share them with the community as Action Groups on the Drafts Action Directory. This particular set of actions was made by the brilliant Rosemary Orchard and shared on her blog here, where she also goes into great detail about using these two applications together.

The actions can be installed directly into Drafts. The topmost action is the one that takes the text of the draft and prompts me to add it to OmniFocus. The other actions along the right side add common TaskPaper syntax to the document wherever you cursor is. For example, tapping the ‘Due’ action will type ‘@due().’ This makes templates more fool-proof as you will be less likely to make a mistake with the syntax.

Draftsactionofprompt

The image above depicts one of the prompts I receive when running the ‘TaskPaper to OmniFocus’ action in Drafts. Scroll to the top of this post to see what the resulting project looks like once it is in OmniFocus.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

I spend most of my time in the Forecast view of OmniFocus which only shows me tasks that are deferred or due for that day, alongside the events in my calendar. Notice in the screenshot below that I don’t think about the deferred tasks on June 24th until I am actually looking at June 24th, thus allowing me to be calm and focused on other tasks on preceding days.

In my post on OmniFocus Perspectives, I talked about how I can focus my view on tasks that are relevant to certain working contexts. With Project Templates, I can focus on only the tasks that are relevant on certain days. They are otherwise out of sight, out of mind. The due dates ensure that I never miss a task.

Forecast

🔀 Guest post: 10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music

This month I wrote a guest post for Midnight Music, an awesome blog and website designed to equip music teachers with technology knowledge and resources.

The post includes about 10 of the productivity apps I use to create, organize, and collaborate on lesson plans in the music classroom. The list covers some of the web tools and native iOS/Mac apps that are most indispensable to my work as a teacher.

Click the link below to head on over to Midnight Music and read the whole thing.

10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music:

Everyone likes to organize themselves differently. Teachers prefer different tools, organization methods, and preference over how much of their workflow is digital. Whatever your approach, there are a handful of great apps that can help you create your plans, search them, group them, and collaborate on them. The following apps are some of my favorite tools for managing lesson ideas, plans and resources.

Many of them have similar features as one another, but all of them have unique strengths. My philosophy is that there is always a better and more specific tool for the job.

Find Robby elsewhere on the web