project templates

🎙 METT Episode #26 - Featuring Katie Wardrobe

Technology trainer and speaker, Katie Wardrobe, joins the show to talk about producing technology training and resources for music teachers. (And way more)

Topics include:

  • Katie's exceptional website: Midnight Music
  • Free vs. paid software
  • Teaching facing / student facing software
  • M1 and Intel Macs
  • Tools Katie uses to make content
  • Canva
  • File Management on iPad
  • Podcasting
  • Managing big projects
  • Our recent favorite tech tips, albums, and apps

Show Notes:

Katie's Home Screen

Robby's Homescreen

App of the Week:
Robby - CalZones
Katie - DaVinci Resolve

Album of the Week:
Robby - Tye Tribbett Apple Music Essentials Playlist
Katie - The Arcadian Wild | Cory Wong & Metropole Orkest

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Katie - 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

METT Episode #18 - Productivity Boot Camp (Part I): Notes and Tasks, with Dr. Frank Buck

Thanks to my sponsors this month, Flat for Education.

Dr. Frank Buck returns to the show for the kick-off of my mini-series, Productivity Boot Camp! Dr. Frank Buck is a productivity master with a background in band directing and administration. I share my knowledge of Apple products and native third-party apps, and he shares his experience with web-based, cross-platform apps. We bounce back and forth about good digital task and note management and share our favorite apps!

Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby - Sticky Widgets
Frank Buck - Feedly

Album of the Week:
Robby - The Lost Art of Longing | BT
Frank Buck - Handel Flute Sonata V - Recording of Dr. Frank Buck Performing

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Frank Buck - 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

Thanks to this week's sponsor, Flat for Education:

Flat for Education offers music educators and their students the most affordable cloud-based music notation software on the market. Empowering teachers to create playful and engaging music activities, creations, assessments on any device at any time.

The platform integrates with every well-known learning management system available: Google Classroom, Microsoft 365, Canvas, Schoology, and MusicFirst to name a few. Everything will be synchronized with your existing setup to avoid any time loss.

Flat for Education offers an advanced system of assignments allowing you to create playful and stunning music activities with your students.

Create a template for all your students to start working from, or simplify the toolbar to have them only working with eighth and quarter notes. The only limit is your imagination.

Save a lot of time by generating worksheets and quizzes in just a few clicks for your students to practice music theory.

Finally, Bands directors and choirs conductors can have their students directly recording their performance from home for review.

Whether you are teaching remotely or in-person, Flat for Education will support you in creating playful and engaging music activities in no time. Try it free for 90 days on flat.io/edu

Learn OmniFocus: Workflows with Robby Burns - Watch the Free Video Now

Last weekend, I had the awesome pleasure of being a workflow guest on Learn OmniFocus, a website dedicated to teaching and training on the task management app OmniFocus, complementary apps, and the productive way of life.

The video, along with resources mentioned in my appearance can be viewed here. I recommend watching it here because there are chapters you can use to skip around to the various sections of the video by topic. 

Alternatively you can watch the video on Facebook or on YouTube.

Topic include

  • the definition of multitasking

  • my love of quick entry and using a task inbox

  • how single item action lists are useful in the middle school band teaching environment

  • how to stay on top of more tasks than are actually possible to do in the day through use of tags and perspectives that filter out information only relevant to a particular context

  • Using the Drafts app for quickly capturing my thoughts, processing my tasks, and acting upon them in powerful ways

  • using project templates for larger projects like field trips and musical performances so that tasks don't slip through the cracks

  • using Siri Shortcuts to turn data into variables and make a blog post, shared document, and OmniFocus project for creating an episode of the Music Ed Tech Talk podcast

  • Using DEVONthink to connect documents to projects and tasks in OmniFocus and keep things I want to "check out later" off of my todo list

  • putting widgets with charts that show a view of my day in OmniFocus on the Home Screen of my iPhone

My thanks to Tim Stringer for his invitation and for his inspiring work with Learn OmniFocus and for inviting me to join!

Learn OmniFocus is a great website, resource, and community dedicated to empowering people to be more mindful and productive. The app OmniFocus is at the center of it but there is so much more to it than that, including productivity basics, apps, and services that compliment one another. Be sure to check it out here and become a member here. There are educator discounts!