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New Software Coming from Apple (And What You Can Do With It)

Its been a busy few weeks as I have been wrapping up the end of a tough school year. While I am late to getting this week’s podcast episode out, I have been working on this site and have a bunch of content to share in the coming week.

I managed to sneak in enough time during the last week of school to watch Apple’s WWDC Keynote and to talk about it on Music Ed Tech Talk with Craig McClellan (cohost of my other podcast, The Class Nerd).

It was an opportunity to take a nice break from the challenging end-of-year procedures, and to think about how Apple’s fall software updates will impact how I get work done in the classroom. Listen below.

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Robby and Craig break down the announcements from Apple's Word Wide Developer Conference and discuss how teachers might use the upcoming features to their latest software updates.

Show Notes:

Album of the Week: Robby - Bones by Michael Mayo Craig McClellan - Sour by Olivia Rodrigo

App of the Week: Robby - Timery for the Mac Craig McClellan - Music Harbor

Tech Tip of the Week: Robby - Transpose Chrome Extension Craig McClellan - Feedbin

Where to Find Us: Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Craig McClellan - Twitter

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

Overviewer - an app that turns an iPhone into a document camera for Zoom and virtual learning

I tweeted about this app when it came out but never posted it here...

Definitely check out Overviewer, a new app that turns an iPhone into a document camera for Zoom and virtual learning. It is made by the same developer as Dark Noise, a white noise app that has no business being as thoroughly considered as it is.

From the developer:

My wife is a Kindergarten teacher and when COVID hit she had to figure out how to teach a bunch of 5 and 6 year olds how to draw letters over Zoom. Initially she made her own document camera using her iPhone and the default camera app. Zoom has a wonderful feature where you can share your iPhone’s screen by plugging into your laptop with a lightning cable or even wirelessly over AirPlay but when you open the camera app there are two issues.

  1. There’s a bunch of buttons and chrome around camera view so it looks clunky
  1. The camera app doesn’t actually rotate when you turn it sideways (just some of the labels) so you can only share your phone in portrait mode which means huge black bars on each side of the zoom call and a tiny video stream of what you want to share.

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

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.

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