Just an iPad observation

I was just working on some non-school related projects (such as helping a teacher make better use out of their 2008 24″ iMac with only 1GB of RAM and running OS X 10.5.8), and I realized something:

Unless I am completing a task that requires my notebook computer (e.g. Finale), my tendency has become to reach for my iPad or iPhone before the MacBook. This is partially a matter of convenience, but I think that the screen quality also has something to do with it. The Retina screens on my iPad and iPhone are easier to read than my late 2008 MacBook.

I have long said that my next personal computer will be a MacBook Air…I will wait until the MacBook Air gains a retina screen.

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SMART Notebook for iPad…a big minor improvement

I will be the first to admit that I haven't paid much attention to SMART Technology products since the iPad was released in 2010. I was a certified SMART Trainer, as my current high school has a SMART Board at every teaching station. But there are subjects where a SMART Board just doesn't make sense in the iPad era–and secondary music (other than, perhaps Theory) is one of them.

SMART Boards can work well in the elementary classroom, however. In many schools, elementary music during the day is taught as general music, in rooms with flexible (or no) seating where a teacher interacts with their students to teach general concepts in music. These teachers lay the foundation for secondary music educator, and their work is priceless.

A number of my elementary colleagues use SMART Notebook to create interactive presentations that allow students (generally one at a time) to draw on the board, reveal items, arrange items, or to use SMART Notebook's ability to embed sounds in the Notebook file and to make an item play a sound when touched from that embedded sound.

There are iPad apps that will allow students to draw on the iPad, reveal items, or arrange items. But linking audio sounds to an object is a missing feature–tied to iOS's locking of the music player app. You can access audio from nearly any app, but you cannot write to that audio collection from the iPad (you have to use a computer and iTunes). You cannot link an audio file in Keynote, nor can you do so in Explain Everything.

However, the latest version of SMART Notebook allows you to create a SMART Notebook file on a computer, to embed and link audio, and then to import that finished file to your iPad in SMART Notebook for the iPad, where the embedded audio file should work (I have found a couple of instances where this did not occur).

It is only a matter of time until Apple solves the problem of writing to the iPad music library, and I'd be surprised if the next version of iWork for the iPad (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers) did not offer more functionality, such as attaching audio to objects in Keynote.

Still…if you are a SMART Notebook user, and you have resisted the iPad because you could not link sounds, you now have a solution to that problem.

 

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A look at the state of technology in music education at the end of the 2013 academic year

The circle of “leaders” in the topic of technology in music education is quite small, and most are on Twitter. Throughout the country, schools are wrapping up for the year, and the annual process of summer breaks and recharging has begun.

At the end of 2013, what is the state of technology in music education, and what looks to be on the horizon? Here are a few of my thoughts.

1. The continued influence and dominance of the iPad in education.

I won't go into great detail about this, as the iPad is a frequent point of discussion in this blog. The fact is that Android still lacks the apps (and paying consumer base) to be effective in music education, and Windows programs have not been tweaked to work without a keyboard/mouse on Windows 8 tablets. Meanwhile, we've seen wonderful improvements in many existing apps, including forScore, unrealBook, Chromatik, Notion, and Explain Everything. We now have the first version of SmartMusic on the iPad, and this will change music education as we know it.

2. The emergence of online services/programs.

Although online services (notation products, etc.) have existed for a while, the improvements in cloud computing and emergence of HTML 5 programming (packaging audio and visual interaction into webpages without the negatives of Flash) have resulted in a number of new online services. In music education, the most agressive packaging of these services is offered by Music First. The idea is that these programs are less expensive and available everywhere on every device. I still prefer on-device apps (or programs), but as this technology improves, it may completely cause us to rethink how apps.

In a similar fashion, more and more districts are moving to Google Apps. Not only do you gain (very) basic office apps (i.e. documents), you gain interactivity on documents, sharing of resources, storage space (30GB per user), e-mail (student and staff), creating teacher websites, and more. Many districts could pay for Google Apps simply by shutting down their e-mail services and moving to Google Apps. I'm all for Google Apps with one caveat…Google is in the advertising business, and they use the information we provide to sell services. But that's a cost most of us are willing to pay for the services that are offered.

3. The tricky Chromebook

Related to online services, the Chromebook offers a computer with a keyboard at the low cost of $200 (after school discounts). As schools move toward Google Services, it is hard not to also throw $200 per student into a Chromebook implementation. In the Chromebook, everything runs in a browser…if it can run in a browser. For “traditional” educational computing tasks, such as writing papers, making presentations, and taking tests, a Chromebook will do fine. It is harder for a Chromebook to reinvent what you can do in your classes with technology, and the device does not fit in traditional music classrooms at any level.

4.The Interactive White Board

The IWB continues to be a standard in teaching rooms, but it is a technology past its prime. Schools would be better off spending the money on improving wireless infastructure, using iPads and either computers with Reflector or Apple TV (mirroring), and investing in high quality audio systems in rooms (voice reinforcement) that actually work. There is value in IWBs at the elementary level as there are issues with audio on iPads (writing to the music files and using those audio files in presentations). But there are work arounds for even this…better to save the money and use it on other technology.

5. Traditional MIDI/Music Labs

If your school has a traditional MIDI/music lab, you are fortunate. Music Technology courses are somewhat rare, but terribly important. This is my opinion, but I am not sure that I would recommend the construction of a MIDI/music lab at this point. Although the iPad cannot do everything that a true music computer station can do, it can certainly do most of what would need to be done with music technology courses at the secondary level. If you use iPads and existing apps, you do not need a dedicated room, and you can buy devices such as the Akai LP25K to use for keyboard entry…and iPad apps keep getting better. We have also seen the introduction of Audiobus, which allows output from many apps…including Apple's own GarageBand…to work with each other. In my opinion, iPad music tech labs offer a wonderful option for many more schools to get into the offering of music technology courses.

6. Social Media

Social Media can be a wonderful thing; and it can be destructive. Teachers need to be aware that anything they post…private or not…has the potential to find its way to the general public, and teachers have been fired or harassed for what they have posted on social media sites. I find Twitter to be a wonderful place for professional development; I have also seen students use it in my current school to attack and destroy other students, teachers, and administrators. There seems to be a limit as to what the administration can do to stop this behavior (what can be considered “bullying” between students can be seen as first amendment rights when it comes to student comments about teachers), it is nearly impossible to montior all student social media accounts, and students even change information about themselves so as to avoid getting into trouble. As Twitter continues to explode in the world of students (along with its video counterpart, Vine), schools are going to have to find ways to better educate students and to protect the rights of anyone bullied online.

7. A season of change in the music notation industry

2012-2013 has been a crazy time in the music notation industry. Avid basically shut down development of Sibelius and dismissed their entire creative team–a team which was picked up by Steinberg and is in the process of writing a whole new notation program. MakeMusic has recently gone from a public traded company to a privately traded company, although much of the same leadership remains in place (including the CEO, who has been named permanent CEO after being Acting CEO for a year). Notion released a major update last fall and is agressively improving their iPad app. 2013-2014 will be a great year to see what is next on the horizon.

8. We get to see what comes next, soon.

Apple's WWDC is just around the corner. Apple will announce what iOS 7 will look like and some of the features that are included. I'm hoping for a few things (things that many people don't care about):

• The ability to write to the music files in the iPad, allowing music to be shared. I know there is great concern about piracy, but I am mostly concerned about sharing audio tracks I have created for my students so they can practice. Right now, I can share the audio file, but they cannot save it from the internet to their iPad to use in apps.
• The ability to write on Keynote (without using Explain Everything).
• The ability to add sound files to Keynote, either as a background track or as a linked audio file in a presentation (right now, you have to make a sound into a movie, and embed the movie in your presentation–over complicated to say the least).

As always, your ideas/observations may be different than mine, but this is what I've seen this year, and what I see coming just over the horizon. One thing is certain: we have never had better tools for music education than what we have today.

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New Beginnings

I wanted to address a change in my life that is rapidly approaching. Beginning next fall, I am stepping away from my role as a high school choir director to take a middle school choir position in our school district.

Our last concert was Thursday night, and it went very well. My top choir still has to sing one song for graduation, all my students need to complete a choral literature and sight reading assessment on SmartMusic, and grades need to be entered–and then I am done (our last day with all students is June 5th, but seniors are done on the 29th and graduate on the 1st).

This is a decision that doesn't make sense to a lot of people. I teach in one of the newest high schools in the state of Minnesota, I chose to move to a new school, and in fact, no one wanted me to move. I started this program from before the school opened in 2009 and was responsible for every item that was purchased for the choir program including risers, chairs, robes, music, and pianos. We started with 32 students and I leave the program on the brink of 160 students (I continue to recruit, even though it will not be my job). I have held very important roles when it comes to technology at the school, which has never quite worked right since the school opened.

Although there are many reasons why I chose to move, there are two that I speak of openly to the public.

The first reason is that high school has extreme time demands on a teacher's life, and this high school–as a new high school–has additional demands on teacher time.

I have two young boys (one just turned 5, and the other is just over 1). This past fall, while we were preparing White Christmas, I went over three months of seeing my boys for a few minutes each morning as I got ready for school, and then not at all until the weekends; once the show was running, I didn't even see them that much. Our rehearsals would end at 6:30, and then I would have to do work to prepare for the next day, and then drive home. By the time I would get home, everyone would be in bed. I did some math the other day, and realized that I have been absent for my five year's old's life for more than a year based upon the impact of the school day (and its existing night commitments) and the fall musical. And yes, this absolutely had an impact on the relationship between my wife and I. Not good, not healthy. The high school music career–particularly in a one-teacher school–is definitely something for single teachers, or teachers whose children are no longer in the house (or teachers whose children attend that high school). Yes, there will be night commitments at the middle school, but it will be nothing like the time required of a high school music teacher.

The second reason is that my new middle school will be moving to 1:1 iPads next year. This wasn't the main reason why I decided to leave, but it was the final reason why I chose to leave. I am absolutely thrilled to bring my personal experience with iPads to this school and these students. I know the school very well, as these students fed into my prior high school position (I've been in the same district since 1997, and even student taught in this district in 1995-1996). I'm excited how the 1:1 environment will impact my teaching, and how I will be able to take the lessons I've learned and bring them to you from the 1:1 aspect. Additionally, as my current high school is the newest building in the district, we are also the last to receive any new initiatives in technology. The school receives reduced capital funds because it is new, and it has no (or very few) compensatory funds based on student demographics. In other words 1:1 iPads at my current high school is something that will not happen in the next five years (or longer) unless there is a referendum for such a project–and it is unclear if the district will pursue such a referendum.

I'm going to miss my students, but they all move on and leave us behind anyway. I love the teaching staff at my high school, but we can stay in touch. I'll miss the facilities at my high school (in fact, I'm moving to one of the oldest buildings in our district), but as I've mentioned, the technology in our new school has been sketchy from the start.

I also believe that my new middle school will support me in my career-related efforts, such as speaking at conferences.

When I grow up, I'd still like to be a college professor, but my focus has changed a bit. I would now prefer to teach pedagogy, technology, and theory, and to direct a secondary (not the primary group on the campus) choir or band.

So, it is an exciting time for me and my family. It has been tremendously heart-warming to hear that I'll be missed from so many students, family, and colleagues. I wish my successor well (a middle school teacher in our district bid up to the position), and I have done everything I can do (and I continue to do so) to keep students in the program and to get even more students into choir.

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App Information: TrueMetronome

Techinmusiced readers: I have recently revised my app review policy.  This is the first of what I hope will be a long list of posts that feature an app on the app store, with information provided by the app developer themselves.  This post is informational; it is not a paid advertisement; I do not personally own this app; nor is this an endorsement.  I have not needed a stand-alone metronome since the introduction of the iPad and iPad apps that are multi-function and include a metronome, but I certainly respect that developers are still committed to their product and making a better “widget.”  So, without any further adieu, here is information about TrueMetronome.

TrueMetronome is the only app worthy of being called a metronome. Almost all metronome apps boast about their accuracy, but users with sensitive hearing notice inaccurate beats all the time. It used to be impossible to create a perfectly accurate metronome on a mobile device. Despite the failure of other apps, perfect time is possible for TrueMetronome: its unique engine creates perfect beats with ABSOLUTE ZERO latency. For this reason, TrueMetronome is the most accurate metronome app on any mobile platform.

Sound quality is the second issue for software metronomes. Serious musicians prefer a natural sound filled with overtones, but all metronome apps play short synthetic samples (so that the first sound stops completely before the next begins). Thus, you hear an artificial, dead sound. Moreover, the identical samples playing at the same frequency can drive any man crazy! TrueMetronome solves this problem thoroughly: all sounds are recorded from real metronomes, a beat does not affect the gradual decay of its predecessors, and each beat’s sound is a little different from the others. All this contributes to the natural sound which is easier on your ears.

Finally, an aesthetic, thoughtful interface is an important aspect of any application, and TrueMetronome pays particular attention to it. Creating an electronic metronome interface is simple, but TrueMetronome does not cut corners: it recreates the look and feel of a real mechanical metronome; every mark on the scale is labeled with a tempo mark, the deviation angle of the pendulum depends on the tempo, and the tempo is selected by dragging the weight.

 

Chromatik Gets an Update

Yesterday night (May 12), Chromatik's most recent update went live on the App Store. This latest version is version 3.0 and it has a number of new features that are worth examining.

The most important updates in Chromatik v. 3.0–in my opinion–is that Chromatik now allows you to create hotspots in the score, making repeats, D.S., D.C., and Coda markings manageable with the app/service. It would be wonderful if the hotspots that were added to a score would be included if the score was added to a playlist and shared with others (saving them the effort of recreating those hotspots).

Additionally, if you are in the edit mode, you can now use a slider bar to quickly move backwards and forwards through a piece.

Although I know that some schools already use Chromatik in their teaching, these two additions make Chromatik an efficient option in the classroom. Without these two features (hotspots, quick turns), management in a rehearsal would be difficult (you would have to move page-by-page slowly through a score).

Yes, there are a number of features I would still like to see added to Chromatik to make it “fully” useful as a tool in music classes:

• I would like to be able to leave the seek bar on at all times (not just in edit mode).
• I would like to be able to write in colors, particularly red and blue.
• I would like to be able to set Chromatik to turn a page forward or back with a single touch on the right or left sides, instead of using the swipe (a single touch brings up the menu). Swiping is a complicated gesture that isn't great in performance (think about holding a tuba, or playing a piano, and swiping, versus a single touch).
• I would like to be able to attach an audio recording and include it on a playlist so that my students could practice with an audio track. This is crucial because iOS has the music library locked up. If Chromatik could work around this, it would be a HUGE solution to a major iOS issue.
• Chromatik is working on a feature that will allow you to sign up to a playlist with a code, rather than entering the e-mail of each student. This will be a huge improvement, but I do not think it is “live” yet.
• I'd like to see a way to get away from the e-mail subscription, for schools, as students under age 13 can't legally have e-mail addresses (but are in secondary level choirs that could benefit from Chromatik).
• I'd still like to see a tuner, metronome, and pitch pipe in the app.
• I love the fact that Chromatik offer music for purchase, even for groups. This is a huge step in the transition from paper to digital music. The problem I have with the purchase program is that the digital music available from Chromatik is the same price as buying a paper copy–and you cannot export what you buy to another program. In my mind, the digital copy should be less expensive as a paper copy–particularly if you can't take it out of Chromatik. As it stands, I would rather buy the paper copy at full price (and we have a local music store that gives us 10% off all year, and 20% during August). Or, I would pay full price if I could move the digital copy out of Chromatik as a high-quality PDF. In reality, I would like a digital copy that is less expensive that I could take out of Chromatik if I so wished/needed. I know the publishers are terrified of copyright infringement, and that Chromatik deserves to make money off of their services. It is a level of DRM (digital rights management) that I understand, but would rather be without.

And I'm sure that Chromatik has far more in store for the app than I can imagine. The recording feature isn't beneficial to me–in choir–because vocal students usually need a harmonic context for their performances. I would need a student to be able to play their part (on the iPad) and record at the same time. The fact is that SmartMusic does this–for vocal or instrumental music. But I can definitely see how the system could be used as the app improves over time.

At any rate, Chromatik's release of v. 3.0 has been pretty quiet (no major announcements), but it is a significant update that takes the app from the category (specifically, my category) of “app to be watched” to “app that can now efficiently be used in your classroom.” I give Matt Sandler (CEO) and the whole Chromatik team kudos for their work.

In my opinion, Chromatik still renders music on the iPad better than any app I've used (and I've used most of them). I think that files are slightly stretched to fill the screen (if necessary), but the end result looks very good…even on an iPad Mini (I'm waiting to buy an iPad Mini [and a MacBook Air, for that matter] until it is offered with a retina screen).

If you haven't signed up for Chromatik, do so today…it is free, and may become the way you distribute music to your music ensembles (you can actually set up band parts for the same score with different instruments–very cool). I think that I will be using it with my middle school choirs next year as they will be 1:1 iPad. I believe that Chromatik is also Air-Turn bluetooth page turing compatible.

 

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ReadWriteThink Trading Cards for iPad

I recently saw a tweet by Richard Byrne about ReadWriteThink's app, Tradiing Cards. There is a web-based version of this app as well.

Create Trading Cards for Historical and Fictional Characters - The Web Version ow.ly/kWkwZ

—
Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) May 12, 2013

The app is free, and you can download it here.

The app does keep you to specific templates, and could be used for any number of things. Here are two trading cards that I quickly put together:

A) Music History – Composers

B) Music Notation

If you are in an all-iPad school (or have access to the web version), perhaps this app might be a creative way to have students do background information on the songs they are singing, or to reinforce other things you are teaching in class (as a project or the dreaded “h” word [homework]). But does it count as work if it is fun to do?

It would be nice if you, as a teacher, could alter some of the fields (not all of the given prompts make sense for music education)…but again, this is a free resource.

The trading card aspect may be of interest to your male students as well–although they cannot put these in the spokes of their bikes.

These could be used for studying a test; perhaps you could choose the best trading cards over the year and print out a collectible set for your students at the end of the year–lots of opportunities here.

 

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