Using Evernote and ReadRhythm to build Student Portfolios

If you are a music teacher with even one iPad in your music room you need to check out the ReadRhythm App! (Web Site) (iTunes Store Link)

BASIC CONCEPT
Their web site does not do enough justice to this little app! The concept is simple – there is a metronome on the left of the screen, a drum pad on the right and a rhythm at the top. Hit the appropriate button and then the metronome starts and then you start tapping the rhythm on the drum pad. When done you are presented with a stack of little green, red or blue dots under the rhythm that indicate if you were in time, early or late.

OPTIONS
There are many different options for you to adjust and many different types of rhythms and different time signatures to pick from. Their web site does lay all of that out for you very well. There are plenty of options to keep any student busy for a long time!

EXCITING PART – OUTSTANDING FEATURES
The exciting part is the way the app scores you. I love the little blue, red and green dots! I also love the fact that the metronome is what the students have to stay with. THEN the part that hammers home the idea that students MUST get the rhythm correct is this….. when the student actually gets a 100% then a magical email icon show up! At this time the students are then able to email their score to me!

EVERNOTE and PORTFOLIOS
This is where I have the students send that email to EverNote…. the iPad has a “contact” set up with EverNote as the persons first name and Upload as the persons last name and the EverNote Upload email as the persons email. That way all the student has to do is start typing two letters into the “To:” field and that EverNote pops up, they tap on it and they never have to worry about the long and funky email address that the email is actually being sent to.

Step two – the students then need to make sure that in the subject field they type in the magical formula that sends this grade to their notebook that I have setup for them in EverNote. So… they simply type in something like this…. @LastnameF    Of course in EverNote I have already set up a notebook for that student that has the same name as what they just typed in. (I used their Lastname with their a capitalized first initial of their first name) By using that “@” symbol in front of the name of the notebook what ever it is that they are emailing me shows up in their notebook online!- which in this case is a screenshot of the ReadRhythm exercise with a score of 100%.

Step three – Then I have to go keep track of who has completed which exercise and enter that into our school gradebook system.

BENEFITS
This is so easy! I can check very quickly who has what done each day because of the way EverNote is set up. There is no collecting of papers, no sorting through a bunch of emails and it puts responsibility on the students shoulders to learn how to use technology correctly. If they don’t learn it then they don’t get a grade, it’s that simple.

Here is a screen shot of what I see in EverNote. I can also track how long it is taking students to do these exercises. This allows me to pinpoint kids that may need additional help!

Here is a YouTube Video demonstrating how remarkably easy this process is – I think it is simply magical! It takes some setting up but it is worth it!

Grades in EverNote

Share files between iOS devices and Macs Quickly and Easily!

I’ve tried many different ways of quickly and instantly sharing files between iOS devices and my Mac. I am forever emailing myself pictures or PDF’s. Of course DropBox is always in the mix as well. When I write this blog I take screen shots and email those to my self. It has always seemed like an extra step that was a hassle.

Enter into the picture InstaShare (You spell it R – E – L – I – E – F!) With this app you can quickly push files out between iOS devices and Macs (this app is still in beta but freely available on their website). It is probably much like using AirDrop on Macs would be (I only have one computer that is capable of doing this so I’ve never used it, but it sounds cool AND easy!) I can see this being very useful in a class where you have multiple iPads. Even if al it allowed me to do is send a file from the teacher iPad to my students one or two times I would be very satisfied with the time saved!

If you have not downloaded it yet then go watch their video on their website, install it and start sharing!

LINK to iTunes InstaShare App

Making the Homework Experience Better with Mobile Phones and Apps!

At our last concert I actually remembered to record the bands! This sounds funny coming from someone like me who uses tech so much but it is hard for me to remember to do this when I am conducting. What I do that does work is make this a students job.

After recording the concert then I uploaded the pieces to SoundCloud. If you have never used SoundCloud in your class you need to! It is awesome! Fast, easy and quick for me the teacher to upload recordings to is one reason. Another reason is that the students can then leave comments on those recordings. Those comments go inline – so if at :30 seconds into the piece we missed being prepared for an entrance a student can click on the waveform at :30 seconds and leave a comment. That comment will then popup at the appropriate time while others are listening back. Instantly the kids are writing – gasp! They are evaluating – higher order thinking. They are communicating with each other and me. It’s all good stuff! Plus the students start to realize that they have a world wide audience they are potentially performing for! Of course we could make these recordings more private. Here is a screen shot of one of our songs… you can see the little boxes under the waveform – those are their comments.

 

In conjunction with this homework assignment I also had the students sign up to follow me on Celly. This is from their website…

“Celly believes small messages change the world

so we built a place where 140 characters - builds movements, inspires learning, levels playing fields & promotes free speech

we call this place a cell

A cell is a mobile social network that works with any mobile phone or device. Members can join instantly with one text and exchange group messages, polls, reminders, and web alerts.”

What this allows me to do is send out messages to my class all at one time. You kind of have to go read their web site to get a better picture. Here is one reason I love using this service… In schools, students and teachers can communicate freely with Celly while keeping phone numbers private. Group messages can be moderated by one or more curators to keep conversations on-topic and friendly.

So tonight I sent out a reminder to my students that they were supposed to have their comments/evaluations of our concert (on SoundCloud) done by the morning. the reason I sent this message is because I knew that only a few had actually done this homework because of my ability to check to see who had left comments on SoundCloud. The response to the Celly message was outstanding! Within 10 minutes this is what my iPad screen looked like!

I love the fact that SoundCloud pops me over a message letting me know someone is making a comment on one of my pieces! I like that the kids are evaluating themselves and I love the fact that this is so easy to keep track of who has done it and who hasn’t!

Using the ShowYou App – Sending video links to your account

Back in October I wrote a post about using the ShowYou app to keep a collection of videos from YouTube that I want to share with my classes.

Here is an update on how I send videos links to my account. It gets a bit confusing and if you don’t do it correctly you may not even notice until you have navigated away from that video and if you are like me some days I can’t find that video again for nothing!

You must have your email associated with your ShowYou account

This is where your email is in the setting section of the app

 

Then you most know the email that you send YouTube video links to -

 

Then I used this share@showyou.com email to send a link of the YouTube webpage with the video on it that I wanted to share with my class later. I actually created a fake person in my address book named Share Person with the share@showyou.com email. That way all I have to remember is when I send an email I type in the fake name of Share and the email gets filled in automatically!

Of course I frequently find my self sending the email from the wrong email account (not email account I have on record at ShowYou.com) at that point in time ShowYou sends me a nice little email response saying this…

Oops! Wrong email!

Hope this helps you in your process of using the Showyou app!

YouTube in the Classroom with ShowYou app

YouTube has always slightly scared me when I go to show a video in class. It’s always a gamble on what’s going to show up. At the same time I don’t like the alternatives like SchoolTube and other services like that. I mean, everyone is using YouTube. Now that Apple doesn’t have a YouTube app the other issue is that when I use the YouTube web site through Safari I can not get the videos to pop out full screen. Of course I could embed a link to the video I want to use in class on my band web page but that seems a few too many steps.

Enter ShowYou. If you have not seen this service you need to use it. Go read about it at their website to get the full idea of what they envision there service as being. Here’s how I use it. Whenever I find a website with a video on it that I want to share with my class, or that I just simply want to “save” so I can find it later easily, I simply email a link to that page to my ShowYou account. I’ve actually created a contact with the name Show You and the correct email. That way it is really easy and I can actually remember it! Then that video magically shows up in my ShowYou wall of videos. No ear of scantly clad women on the sidelines distracting my students. Plus from this app I can flick the video to full screen or simply tap on the expand icon.

An additional benefit is that I can find other music educators or musicians who use the service and follow them. This lets me find out what others are discovering and sharing that I might not otherwise discover.

Here is a picture of the main wall of the app…. This is not my wall of videos because I don’t like my user icon so you don’t get to make fun me…. You have to follow my ShowYou account if you want to see that!

iTunes Match upgraded to a streaming service and Play Counts stick.

A reader asked a great question about iTunes Match and how play counts work. After playing around with it a little bit I found a few interesting details.

After signing up for iTunes Match iTunes will match your songs to the songs in Apple’s library. Then if you your songs are “matched” you will see that indicated in your iTunes (if you have iTunes Status turned on in your view settings that is.) What it means is that if your song is “matched” then Apple already has that song in their library and your version will not be uploaded to their servers. If a song is not matched, for instance the songs that I have recorded sitting in my basement messing around in my studio, then my song will be uploaded to Apple’s servers.

This process serves two purposes. After this happens I can then go to my iPad for instance, and then access those songs that have been matched or uploaded WITHOUT having to hook up a cable to my computer and drag and drop them onto my iPad. Secondly the process of getting your iTunes library into the Cloud is so much faster than uploading every single song in your library to Apple. (Trust me – Google does this and it took FOREVER (as in more than a week!))

More importantly, Apple will upgrade your songs if they are matched but are a lower quality on your computer. I have taken my old cassette tapes for instance and recorded them onto my laptop. I know that when I did this the quality was not that great for some of those files because I had worn out those tapes long ago! Maybe I had even saved those files as mp3. Now we are talking two things that have degraded my files. If Apple matches those songs their version is much better than mine! So after matching I simply delete the file off my computer, iTunes asks if I also want to delete the file from iCloud, I do NOT check that box and then I also have iTunes move the file to the trash on my computer. I then get a little iCloud icon with a download arrow in it. That indicates that my song is sitting in iCloud waiting to be played or downloaded.

Here is where it gets interesting! After doing this you can play the song anytime you want from iCloud. It is fast (depending on your service I suppose of course – I experience about a second delay at home) In the past when I would play a song like this it would be automatically downloaded to my computer again. I would then have the newer, better file sitting on my computer. NOW that song is NOT downloaded anymore – the file STREAMS! I will have to play around with this on my iPad because this could be HUGE news to those of us trying to save space on our iOS device by not having every song stored on our iPad for instance. If I want to actually download that file I simply click the iCloud icon with the little download arrow in it and the file is downloaded.

Also, in answer to the original question Aaron asked, play counts do not get se-set. So if you are tracking how many times you have played a song you will not loose that info. If the song is on your computer and you have played it three times, then you delete it from your computer so that the file is only in the cloud and you play it again (stream it again) the play count will say 4. If you then download it by clicking that icon and play it then the count turns to 5.

If you are like me and you don’t TRUST the process then try it out with only one or two songs first.

Check out my screenshot. In it you can see the iCloud icon, you can also see in the play bar at the top where the song is playing and streaming to my computer all at once.

AirPlay and AirFoil

So the other day I was cleaning up around the Band Room trying to get everything packed up for the summer. The trouble was it was too quiet. I needed music! So I grabbed my iPad and hooked it up to the speakers, hit play and turned it up – I mean come on, there were no kids around and I needed inspiration! About five minutes later another teacher walked into the room. Of course I had to walk over to the iPad and turn it down so we could carry on a conversation without yelling at each other. That teacher left, I hit play and continued on to work. A half an album later and I thought about listening to The Brass Band of Battle Creek! So I trekked over to the iPad, did a few flicks of the finger and turned on some great Brass music!

After work I was sitting downstairs at my laptop and my Son, from across the room asked if I had heard the new 12 Stones album that he had just purchased. Of course he was way more up to date than I was and I had not heard it. So he hurriedly came over to share the new album with me since it was not loaded up on my computer.

After all that I got to thinking about how much easier it would have been while at school if I could have been controlling the music I was working to with my iPhone, it was right there in my pocket the entire day! I could have started, stopped, turned it down, picked new music and I’m sure it would have made a great impression on others who just happened to walk into my room! Or what if my Son could have just simply stayed where he was and hit play on his iPad and I could have heard the new music on my iPad/iPhone/Computer?

At first you might be thinking – Get an AirPort Express! Well, to an extent you would be offering a great solution. The problem is that at school an AirPort Express doesn’t work – I tried! Your next thought may be – Use the Reflection or AirServer Apps to play music through to your classroom computer which is hooked up to the sound system. I would have – but I had the computer and sound system tore apart to pack it all up for the summer.

Of course I wouldn’t be writing about all this if I had not found a solution. I have known about Airfoil and Airfoil Speakersfrom Rogue Amoeba for a while now. I like what it does… It allows you to play music from your computer to a number of different devices all around wherever you may be. But I have never really used the app because I just have not wanted to send audio FROM a computer to my iPad or iPhone. I do constantly want to send audio and other items the other direction though as mentioned in the scenario above. A while back the Airfoil Speakers App was updated in the iTunes Store and this time the update information caught my eyes. The update included the ability to transmit audio from any iOS device to another iOS device! The app did not stay in the store long though. Apple yanked the app because of that ability to play from iOS to iOS. Rogue Amoeba had a difficult time getting Apple to work with them though. Just the other day AirFoil Speakers app was admitted back to the Apple Store again, without the ability to play from iOS to iOS though. Read more about it here on CultofMac. Rogue Amoeba had to take that capability out of their app. Bummer!

Rogue Amoeba has an article on their website about one work around. Kind of what I wanted but not as easy as I hoped.

Then today I found a nice article from 9To5 Mac about how to get this functionality back, without having to jailbreak your device. It appears that, as of now, all you have to do is download iExplorer from MacroPlant. This free little utility lets you access your iOS device like a flash drive from your computer. After downloading that app you will then need to download a plist file into a specific spot on your iOS device (check the article from 9to5 – there is a tweet in there with a picture about where to put the plist file.) This was EASY, Fast and worked like a charm. It was a bit tricky getting the plist file into the right spot and I think I had to restart my iPad to make it take effect. But now I can start up the AirFoil App on my iPad, go to my iPhone Music App and hit play, select the iPad exactly as I would if I was selecting any other AirPlay device and I’m in business!

If this interests you at all, I would suggest that you go get the plist file, download the tweeted picture and get the AirFoil App form the App Store NOW! Who knows how much longer this will all stay available. Of course who knows if it will even still work after Apple makes all their announcements this next Monday at WWDC.

Talking with the Tech Department at School

You should make friends with the school custodians and secretaries. That was advice from my college prof. I would add to that lost the school tech crew now that we live with the amount of tech that we do.

I was discussing DropMark with the tech people today. I was glad to hear that they were willing to quickly put together Google Chrome and get it deployed to my computer lab so my kids could actually use DropMark. E were trying to use it with an old version of Internet Explorer and it was not working. After explaining what DropMark was about they were impressed and got chorme deployed in just two days! Yea!

Kids are liking DropMark and it is proving easy for them to use. I was surprised t how many had no idea of how to drag an drop though.

Reflection on the ReflectionApp and the AirServerApp and Apple TV

I have been very excited because every year when I get my tax refund back I usually convince my wife to let me buy a new toy. Like my iPad’s or a new kayak. This year I’ve known for a long time that I was going to be buying an Apple TV with the converter from HDMI to VGA with audio. I’ve been using my iPad for two years now every day in class and I wanted to take things to the next level. I want the students to be able to see many of the tools that I have at my finger tips.

I’ve been using the AirServerApp, running on my classroom computer for a year now. That app was the previous version 3. I used it to AirPlay music to my classroom sound system. Of course it has worked flawlessly, with the one exception that there was no security on it. That meant that frequently some kid working out down in the weight room would discover a pretty new icon on his iPod Screen (you know, that one for AirPlay that is never there until you can actually use it!) and in the middle of rehearsal I would suddenly have some pumping jams in the middle of a Michael Sweeney festival piece! Now during a high school rehearsal we would simply enjoy the commercial break. I would dance a bit for the class and then flip the mute switch then back to work we would go. BUT I REALLY tried to leave the mute switch on during middle school class because the rest of rehearsal after an episode like that was usually useless! It was worth it though to be able to wirelessly stream music, at will from anywhere I had my phone, iPod Touch or iPad!

You are probably wondering why in the world I didn’t just buy an AirPort Express and use that. Those have pass codes on them! Well I did! The only thing was that my PC tech guys freaked out! Plus I could not for the life of me get that darned thing to work at the school, on the school network! I even talked to the “big guys”, the ones doing the install on the new wireless servers going into our school to see if they had an answer for making it work, These are tech guys not form our school but instead with a big company whose only job was to install these wireless servers. Their answer was – don’t bring in home network devices, our devices will simply block them! I was in fact afraid I would have similar trouble with an Apple TV. I was hoping though that it would work.

Turns out I might not even try though! This last week of February was a great week! Especially for those of us school teachers in situations like this!

First, the ReflectionApp came out! This is from the same company that makes AirParrot – which puts your mac screen on your AppleTV. ReflectionApp is meant to mirror your iOS device onto your Computer! Of course your iOS device has to be capable of this, the iPad2 and iPhone4s both are. Not only does the mirroring include the picture but it streams the audio as well! So in other words, instead of having to but an AppleTV ($99), a convertor ($45 or more), and get it to work with my school network, I simply bought a $15 app and installed it on a computer I already have hooked up to my classroom projector and I am in business.

Second great thing was that the same day I bought and installed the ReflectionApp an error message showed up on my computer. Getting excited about error message is not normal I know, but this error came from an app called AirServer that I have been running for a year now! The message said that I needed to purchase an upgrade from AirServer in order to mirror my iPad! This startled me! I had not heard, and still haven’t, anything about AirServerApp adding the capability to mirror from an iOS device! So I headed over to their website - http://www.airserverapp.com/ and found it plastered all over the front page of the website! I quickly bought the $3.99 update. I had some issues with the update because when I originally bought the AirServerApp I used an old email that I never use any more. I bought the update with a new email. This really ticked off the AirServerApp and for a day I was in a limbo with the update screen from the app freezing up when it tried to authorize the update. The tech support took a day but considering that it was Friday night that’s probably not bad. They updated their databases of paid people and I was in business. I like their tech support.

So now, the good stuff! I’ve been playing with both apps for all of today and it’s been great fun. Of course I am at home with my MacBookPro and no projector hooked up. My kids walk by and I’ve had one of them do a double take and say – Whoa! Your iPad is on your computer! Then one of the other boys said, Why are you doing that?

Here’s what I’ve discovered. With the ReflectionApp there are more options for you to configure. At first boot the iPad (or iPhone) pops up with a border around it. This looks cool at first but in my case I want the image as big as possible so the students can see it better. It’s easy to take the border off. Another option that helps get the image bigger is to have the app go fullscreen. Now I have not really liked using the full screen mode in Lion. But I like it in this app because it is more what I expected – when using my iPad everything is full screen all the time. Plus I want no other distractions when projecting that image to the students. A quick shortcut (command F) and the app pops out of full screen mode. There are different optimizations for what image size you want mirrored, iPad, standard iPhone, Retina iPhone, or High resolution. This has been one of three issues I have found when using ReflectionApp. When I switched to High Resolution I really messed things up. I had to quite Reflection and reboot my iPad both to get things mirroring again. The second issue I found with ReflectionApp is when switching from portrait to landscape mode. If I am in landscape mode when I start the mirroring the image on the computer is filling the full screen, top to bottom – right to left. Then I can switch to landscape and the image is still top to bottom (not right to left of course) BUT when I switch back to landscape the image is no longer filling the entire screen top to bottom. It is smaller. A quick flick of the command F shortcut pops it back but I am not going to want to do that in the middle of class. The image when it is not filling the screen still is large and acceptable though.

Mirroring with both apps have gone very well – I will mention one exception at the end of this post about trying to mirror instrument apps though. In face with the ReflectionApp I found that I can end up mirroring both my iPad2 AND my iPhone4s! OK – I take that back I can mirror both devices with both apps! If you really want to do this though you should not have the automatic full screen mode on though because it is kind of a pain to get it to look like my screen shot. One of the amazing things I’ve found is that I can be running both the ReflecitonApp and AirServerApp at the same time. They are working very well together and they are not fighting each other at all! I even have been running audio from iPad through ReflectionApp and mirroring it too while mirroring my iPhone with AirServerApp! The audio plugged away and the video behaved as it had all day long with just one of these apps running at a time. I have been running the mirroring all day when I have been at my computer (my daughter did become a teen though so my time has been limited with her party and bowling and shopping though!). Every thing runs smooth as I would expect for all normal apps. I even tried photoBooth. There is a bit of a time delay in PhotoBooth as well as FaceTime with the video. At times I do get a stutter in the audio too. You should understand though that I am running an old AirPort Express with only 802.11b and I know that two of my boys have been running iTunes, FaceBook, Web Surfing and the like through their iPodTouches too.

My only complaint is when I have tried my musical instrument apps. For instance a piano app, MorphWiz or something like this. The lag is not going to work at this time for live performance! There is not way I could mirror this at at a concert and play a song on my iPad so the audience could see what was going on. Now I’m not sure what the problem is though because the PR on both web-sites show gaming apps running and they say that people could be using this for mirroring games! I am not a gamer but I do have a few games loaded on my iPad and I tried BugDom and it worked pretty well on both apps. Cro-Mag Rally crashed the ReflectionApp but worked in AirServer. So for gaming and musical instruments…. I wouldn’t hold my breath too much. These apps are not rock solidly performing in either mirroring app yet!

In wrapping this post up… there are two more points I need to make. The ReflectionApp tech support is really super and really super fast! I sent an email requesting and asking about a passcode (because the first version I downloaded didn’t have a passcode in it) Within minutes they had responded back to me. The next day there was an update to the program! Now don’t get me wrong – I know the update was not because of me but these guys are working hard on their app and want to interact with their users.

The AirServerApp has been rock solidly streaming music in my band room for a year now. This app is a bit more polished. For instance, there aren’t very many settings that we can adjust, the app just does it for you. When you select a song on your iPad in the Music app and push play there is a little notification (very Growl like, if you know what Growl is) on your Mac that tells you what song is playing. When you play videos, like YouTube, and take the video full screen, AirServer uses it’s own built-in movie player. AirServer has some more info about this sort of thing on their web site.

Both apps are great. ReflectionApp requires OS 10.6 or higher. AirServer will work somewhat with Tiger, Snow Leopard, Leopard and Lion as well as working some with Android devices (I think just for audio though) they are both $14.99 (the upgrade for AirServer from v3 was $3.99)

Reflection App, Apple TV for $15?

Buying an Apple TV is on my list of soon to buy items. Of course at this point I am waiting until next weeks announcements from Apple on March 7. I have ideas about what will be announced, go read the rumor blogs if you have no idea. I an assure you it is not the iPhone 5 though, like one of my 8th graders pronounced today in class. Of course I don’t have any REAL knowledge, just educated guessing.

The problem with the Apple TV is that my classroom projector does not have HDMI. This means I also need an adaptor. No problem, just need more money.

Now, today though I saw all sorts of information about the Reflection app for Mac. This app allows you to mirror what is on your iPad2 or iPhone 4s to your computer. It works too! Go check out the website and watch the videos.

My question to those of you who have an Apple TV already is how does it compare in real life? $99 vs $15