In "Digital Organization Tools for Music Educators," I detailed apps that can help you plan large goals, turn them into actionable projects, and reflect on your progress.

Next, I'd like to talk about apps to help you manage your time and save your ideas digitally.

Put Only Hard Commitments in Your Calendar

Managing your time is a key part of being a music educator. Sometimes it feels like we have more responsibilities than there is actually time in the day to complete.

In "Digital Organization Tools for Music Educators," I recommend apps to help you wrangle your to-do list. Now I would like to recommend some apps and tips for managing the events on your calendar.

If your calendar needs are simple, I recommend you go no further than Google. It runs entirely in a web browser but can also be used in combination with your calendar app of choice. My music team uses a Google Calendar to publish all of our classes, sectionals, concerts, and events. This allows us to edit this data right from our calendar apps on our phones and computers, while also publishing them to a website for parents to view.

Google Calendar works perfectly fine for most needs. It is available to anyone for free on the web and has a functional mobile app on most smartphone platforms.

Microsoft Outlook and the Apple Calendars, despite being created by big tech companies, are actually capable of showing you a calendar from any service (Google included). My personal calendars are in iCloud, and our school uses Exchange. I can log into my iCloud, Google, and Exchange calendars all from within the same app to see everything I am committed to.

Apple Calendar and Microsoft Outlook are two of the most widely used calendar apps on desktop and mobile operating systems. Either of them can handle calendars from Google, iCloud, or Exchange accounts and show them all alongside one another.

daily tasks

Tip!—Avoid putting tasks in your calendar. Tasks have due dates, but they rarely need to be worked on at a specific time. I find that putting tasks in my calendar adds lots of noise and I eventually just end up ignoring all of it. If you want to stay sane, put only time-based appointments on your calendar. You can make an appointment with yourself to tackle a big task, but try to avoid putting things like "print concert programs" and "design seating chart" alongside events with concrete start and end times.

If you want more power out of your calendars, I recommend you check out Fantastical. (Currently iOS and Mac only. Android users can check out SolCalendar). Here are my favorite features:

Natural language input is not only fast, but you can set a keyboard shortcut on your computer to invoke a mini-calendar for quickly adding events.

Natural language input: Typing "Choir Rehearsal tomorrow at 7 pm @2032 Beaverton Road /Work" will add an event called Choir Rehearsal to your calendar at the designated time and location. The "/Work" will put on the "Work" calendar.
Calendar Sets: I subscribe to my school and school district's master calendar to better plan after-school rehearsals, concerts, and space use. I subscribe to these calendars in Fantastical, but I have them toggled off by default. I created a Calendar Set called "All" that turns on the chaos and shows me every single calendar I have at once. Many things overlap, but it enables me to be informed as I plan without needing to visit my district's website.
Conference Call Detection: Fantastical also has built-in Zoom and Google Meet integration. If it detects a meeting URL in the calendar event, it adds a one-touch button to the event which will launch you right into the meeting. This event was shared with me and has a Zoom call URL associated with it. Fantastical automatically added the Zoom icon so that I can click on it to immediately enter the call. Fantastical integrates with all of these services.

A handful of Fantastical's features are free, and some of the more advanced features are paid.

Other great calendar apps:

Quickly Clip Ideas from Everywhere

There is much to say about note apps. The one feature I see least utilized by busy teachers is the clipper. A clipper is a tool that runs in the Share Sheet of your phone or as a web extension. Clippers are perfect for "saving it for later." A good one can handle mixed media including photos, websites, emails, text notes, files, and more. Here are my favorite apps that have easy ways to capture data for later:

Evernote: Known for being cross-platform and having a free tier. Its web extension can grab almost anything from the web and clip it to your notebook in a neatly formatted article view that is text searchable. The Evernote web clipper can be installed as an extension or from the share-sheet on mobile devices. You can choose how it will save the content, and even categorize it with tags and a memo before clipping.
Microsoft OneNote: Similar features to Evernote. It's free if your district has Office 365. Plays nice with the rest of the Office Suite.
Apple Notes: Apple Notes has caught up with most of the major features of competing note apps. From almost anywhere on an iOS or Mac device, press the Share button to save something to Apple Notes. Almost any type of media can be clipped.
Drafts: Drafts is text-only, but I prefer it for my note-taking because I can capture quickly and then easily send the text out to other apps once I have decided where it belongs.
Google Keep: Leverages all smart AI features and integration with Google Services that you would expect. Google Keep is simple, but it provides plenty of features. Notes can be turned into reminders, Google Docs, or shared with others.
Instapaper: Primarily for saving web content like news articles. It strips out the ads, buttons, and other chrome, so you get an experience less like reading a website and more like reading a newspaper.

Of these apps, Evernote is most able to handle whatever kind of data you throw at it. Because it's available on the web, it's easy to share your data with others and even get your data out and into another app, if you choose to.

Instapaper snipping tool

Before and after a website has been parsed by Instapaper's clipper.

Tip!—In the same way I try to avoid putting tasks on my calendar, I also try to avoid clipping things I want to check out later to my to-do list. It clutters things up. I put only actionable tasks on my task list. If it doesn't have a verb ("email Jacklyn choir rosters for 2021–22," "tune the bass drum," "draft grant proposal"), save it to a note instead.

no clippings or to-do lists

Robby Burns

October 29, 2020

Original Post

Using Drafts and TextExpander to Organize Lesson Notes

Robby Burns

October 29, 2020

Original Post

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.

Robby Burns

July 24, 2020

Original Post

Creating a Focused Home Lesson Planning Environment with Dark Noise and a Siri Shortcut

Robby Burns

July 24, 2020

Original Post

There's a new update to my favorite noise app, Dark Noise. I learned about this app from Craig McClellan during the App of the Week segment on episode 9 of the Music Ed Tech Talk Podcast.

Now that many teachers are working from home, I have found that managing my environment is key to my sanity. Dark Noise elevates the idea of a noise machine to a premium level, offering a superior user experience and all sorts of power user tools like Siri Shortcuts integrations.

One of my favorite Shortcuts is called Lesson Planning. The shortcut puts my phone in Do Not Disturb mode, starts a time tracker, takes a predetermined sound in Dark Noise, and plays it in a particular AirPlay 2 speaker in my house. For me, that's a Sonos Move speaker in the sun room.

You can download that Shortcut here: Lesson Planning

That version of the Shortcut is intended for public use. My personal version of it adds a step to set the hue of the lights in that same room.

The shortcut can be set to go off when I ask Siri, by launching it from a widget, or by even installing it as an app icon on the homescreen. Its never beyond a tap away. My custom phrase is "Hey Siri, I'm working in the sun room."

The new update includes some nice new features. Read this MacStories article for the details:

Dark Noise 2 Review: Sound Mixing, New Noises, iPad Cursor Support, and More - MacStories:

In Dark Noise 2 not only can you mix different sounds to create custom noises, but there are also eight new sound options to choose from, iCloud sync has been added for syncing your favorite sounds and custom mixes, and there’s optimized support for the iPadOS cursor. It’s a big release that retains the design elegance Dark Noise has had from day one, but expands the app’s usefulness in key ways.

Robby Burns

May 8, 2018

Original Post

App of the Week: Drafts 5

Robby Burns

May 8, 2018

Original Post

My ability to handle the cognitive load of teaching middle school band is largely supported by a wonderful app called Drafts, made by Agile Tortoise. I will detail a little bit about how I use this app below, but I want to first say that the developer of Drafts, Greg Pierce, very generously chatted with me about it on my podcast recently. Greg also has a background in guitar, ethnomusicology, and folk studies. He has an interesting journey towards app development, which we also talked about on the show. Listen to the episode here.

So what is Drafts? Drafts is the starting point for all text on my iPhone and iPad. It sits on the dock, right under my thumb, and I press it every time I have any kind of thought that I don’t want to slip away. Drafts opens to a blank white screen and a keyboard so you can instantly start typing. Adding a new Draft is as simple as tapping the plus button. You don't need to worry about what kinds of thoughts these are, or what kinds of apps you should be capturing them in. They can be todos, messages, emails, future blog posts, anything. Picture me at the front of the classroom before band rehearsal. 70 students pouring into the room. Instruments blaring loud. Countless questions being thrown at me at once. Chaos all around. From the podium, I leave Drafts open alongside my sheet music and type anything that comes to mind. If a student tells me they don’t have a 2nd trombone part to Air and Dance, I write a note in Drafts. If a flute is broken, I start an email to the repair shop requesting for them to come pick it up. If I want to take general notes on our rehearsal progress, I start typing that in another draft. Even if I remember I need eggs at the grocery store later, I type that too!

A beautiful, distraction free, user interface, as soon as you launch Drafts.

Drafts pairs perfectly with the sheet music app forScore in split view mode.

All of this stuff is categorized in the inbox where I can easily access it by swiping to the right. Here I can view any current or past archived draft, flag important ones, or send them to the trash. Once I am ready to process it all, I swipe left to reveal actions. Actions can do many things. At the most simple level, they send text to other apps like messages, email, a todo app, or Twitter. But actions can be heavily customized. They can perform multiple steps on text, and even run JavaScript on them. In the example below, you can see that I have a variety of drafts. Meeting notes, a few tasks, a start to a grocery list, a text to my wife, and the beginning of an email. To process these I would use the following actions, respectively: Send the meeting notes to the Apple Notes app, the tasks go to OmniFocus (where I manage all of my todos), the groceries go into my Reminders app grocery list, the text to my wife goes to Messages, and the email goes to Mail. Many of these actions happen in the background, meaning that I don't leave Drafts, and can therefore process them really quickly. You don't need to be a fancy pants to get awesome actions into Drafts, by the way. Some of my most frequently used actions are built into the app. There is also an Action Directory where you can steal the wonderful actions that others have already made.

Swiping right reveals all unprocessed drafts.

Swiping left reveals all of the various actions you can perform on drafts.

Drafts 5, the newest version, was released recently. The app is free which means there is absolutely no excuse not to give it a try. Some of the power features like creating your own actions and using automation require a subscription price of $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year.

This is the Edit Action screen. Actions are highly customizable. This particular action a) saves meeting notes to Evernote, b) saves tasks begining with "@" to my OmniFocus task app, and c) emails the notes to others in attendance.

I have always treated Drafts as a starting point for text. Interestingly, the new version has added some features that encourage using it as a note app replacement. You can now tag notes, create lists with checkable boxes, and even create custom workspaces that you organize your text into (paid feature). I am not sure if using Drafts this way is for me, but here are some ways I have been experimenting with it…

Processing Text

I have a "default" workspace depicted by the blue star icon below. Navigating workspaces is as easy as tapping custom icons in the lower left. My default workspace is where all of my unprocessed notes go. These generate a badge that appears on the icon of the Drafts app so that I don't forget to act upon them later. This workspace resembles the extent to which I was using the previous version of Drafts.

My default workspace. This functions like I used to use Drafts before workspaces became available.

Simple Lists

My next workspace is where I keep active lists of things like recommended movies to see, blog ideas, and even a list of things I do every time I migrate to a new Mac. I can automatically append this list by pressing the "Add to list" action (available here) and then choosing which list to add to.

If a friend recommends a movie to me, I quickly write it in a draft without fiddling around with apps on my phone and getting distracted from conversation. Later, I append it to my movie list in one tap.

Blog Drafts

My next workspace is for blogging. I usually write my blog posts in a third party text editor called Ulysses which means that I usually get started in Drafts and then tap an action that sends the text there. But sometimes I do like to spend a little bit of time in Drafts writing before I take that step. For these types of drafts, I now have a tag called "blog" that allows them to show up separate from my other notes that need to be processed.

Lesson Planning and Note Taking

My last workspace is called Sectionals. My band program has weekly classes for each instrument. Once a week, I see the flutes from my band during one period, the clarinets the next, etc. I do some lesson planning for these sectionals in a note app called Bear. In those same notes I also write down things that happen in the sectionals. Things I assigned, things I assessed, things I said, students absent, instruments I repaired, etc. Fiddling through my notes app to add these notes was getting cumbersome and was distracting me from engaging with my students. So I created a series of sectional related actions that enable me to automate part of this process. The “R1, R2...” actions in the image below are examples of text expansion. Tapping buttons like these expand text that I commonly type. R1 stands for Rotation 1, which I would type if I were taking notes on the first week trumpet sectional for the quarter. The other actions automatically append my sectional notes. For example, tapping SW Trumpet would take my draft and append it to the bottom of that particular note in the Bear note app.