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David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

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6 Tech Podcasts I Listen to Every Week

I am often asked where I go to learn about technology.

The truth is that most of it comes through a few blogs and podcasts. I don't listen to many podcasts that deal specifically with integrating technology into the music classroom, though there are a few good ones. (Aside from my own, I recommend Katie Wardrobe's show Music Tech Teacher and MusicFirst's Profiles in Music Teaching with Technology.)

I don't listen to prescriptive "how-to" shows. I focus more on industry analysis, details of hardware and software features, and extended discussion. My favorite shows are conversational in tone rather than the hyper-produced style of the modern-day shows that NPR has popularized.

I find this style of show to be far more listenable and engaging while giving me a deeper and underlying understanding of the technology I use. This way, I am more empowered to adapt the technology I have to my unique professional challenges and lifestyle.

Here are my six favorites...

Upgrade

Probably my most listened show. Heavily focused on Apple technologies, news, and the streaming media landscape. The show is deeply informative but also has some produced elements like theme music and segments, which keep each episode moving at an engaging pace.

Here is a recent episode where the hosts review the new M1 iMacs and M1 iPad:

The Vergecast

The Verge is a great website for learning about all things in consumer tech. Their podcast is the most produced on this list, but the camaraderie between speakers allows for the ideas to present as looser and more raw than they do in written articles.

I have been considering an electric vehicle lately and enjoyed this episode about recent EUVs:

Mac Power Users

This show delivers tips for making the most of your computing devices each week. It includes pro tips, app recommendations, and interviews with professionals spanning many industries. Listening to MPU is one of the inspirations for my book, as it focuses on not just the tools, but how to implement them creatively.

If you are looking for a place to start, check out Music Ed Tech Talk frequent guest, David MacDonald, on this episode of Mac Power Users:

The Talk Show

John Gruber's The Talk Show is one of the shows that made me love podcasting. Though episodes are inconsistent in length, scope, and irregularly released, Gruber and his guests always have engaging discussion. So much so that I don't mind rants about sports, politics, and other "off-topic" diversions. This show is in some respects a prototype for the kinds of discussions I like to have on my podcast. Personal, detailed, and analytical.

Accidental Tech Podcast

Also very Apple-focused, but with more perspective on software development and adjacent technologies. This show is lengthy and more unstructured but also very deep. The three hosts are in software development and sometimes talk about topics that are just on the outside of my wheelhouse, but I am still able to follow along. The perspective of these hosts has strongly influenced the kind of quality and detail I expect from my technology.

This episode is a fan favorite, and gives you an insight into the kind of detail the hosts cover, and also their relationship:

Dithering

This is a paid show. For me, it is worth the $5 a month because it includes John Gruber from The Talk Show with one of my favorite of his reoccurring guests, Ben Thompson, who is a brilliant technology analyst. Two 15-minute episodes are released each week. The tight format keeps the discussion fast and rich.

Here is a clip:

🎙 forScore for the Mac, featuring David MacDonald (Music Ed Tech Talk #31)

Robby and David talk about forScore for the Mac and its new syncing feature. But also, lots of music theory.

Also included:

  • Loop-based music theory

  • GoodNotes for the Mac

  • Transcribe Apps

  • Lots of music apps and utility apps

  • Tech podcasts we like

  • Music YouTubers we like

  • Our favorite music, tech tips, and albums of the week

Show Notes:

App of the Week: 

Robby - Soro for Sonos
David MacDonald - Diagrams

Album of the Week:

Robby - Lettuce - Elevate
David MacDonald - Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society - Brooklyn Babylon 

Where to Find Us:

Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
David MacDonald - 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

Eliminating Canvas Stress by Writing Content in Markdown

Left: A draft of a Canvas page, written in a text file on my computer. I used the Markdown syntax for headings, lists, and links. Right: What the Canvas page looks like once the text on the left is imported into the course page as HTML.

Left: A draft of a Canvas page, written in a text file on my computer. I used the Markdown syntax for headings, lists, and links. Right: What the Canvas page looks like once the text on the left is imported into the course page as HTML.

My district’s LMS of choice is Canvas, which is pretty stressful to work with. From most accounts I hear about other LMS software, Canvas is far from the worst. “You go to war with the LMS you have” I once heard.

Lately, I am writing my Canvas content in Markdown and storing it as text files on my computer.

Why?

Canvas is littered with user-hostile behaviors. Each class is a separate container. All files, pages, and assignments are quarantined, requiring multi-step procedures for sharing between courses. On top of this, the organizing tools are a mess. I am never 100 percent sure where to go. Even when I do, I have to wait for the internet to load each new thing I click on.

Instead of one file repository that all courses pull from, each class has its own separate Files area.

Instead of one file repository that all courses pull from, each class has its own separate Files area.

Canvas is equally difficult for students. All of the course pages and content are just sort of floating in space. It’s up to the teacher to link the material together meaningful, but the tools to do so are inelegant and unintuitive. My music program has resorted to a website for communicating most general information since it exposes the hierarchy of its structure to our viewers. In other words, we control where every page lives, and our students can get to any part of our site from the navigation bar at the top of the page.

The WYSIWYG web editors you see within most Canvas pages, assignments, and announcements are equally frustrating. They are clunky, the text field is tiny, the buttons for all the tools are ambiguous, and I lose my data if the page refreshes itself or I lose connection. Additionally, it’s hard to anticipate what my formatting will look like before actually clicking the save button.

Lately, I am writing my Canvas content in Markdown and storing it as text files on my computer. By editing in Markdown, I can create content in third-party apps, work with data offline, control where files are organized, search them from the Spotlight, and quickly export as HTML for input into the Canvas HTML editor when I am ready to publish.

Using Mac and iOS Native Apps

I like native applications because the good ones feel designed to look like the computing platform. For example, the forScore app on iOS uses similar navigation buttons and fonts to Apple’s own Mail, Keynote, Pages, and Notes. This way, I don’t feel like I am learning new software.

Native apps that deal with documents store files on my hard drive. I can easily organize them into my own folder system, work on them without an internet connection, open the same file in different applications, and search them from the Spotlight. Document-based apps update your file as you edit your data. Websites often lose your data when they run into issues.

I don’t write anything longer than a sentence or two into the text field of a website. Instead, I draft them inDrafts and move my work to iAWriter for longer projects. Both of these apps can preview Markdown.

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a shorthand syntax for HTML. It empowers me to draft web content without actually writing code. Skim this Markdown syntax guide to see what I mean. You can learn the basics in five minutes.

Drafts and iA Writer have one-button shortcuts to convert Markdown to formatted text or HTML. Here is an example of Markdown, and what it would look like once converted to rich text or HTML.

# Blog Post Title
Here are *three things* I want to do today.
1. Work out
2. Sit in the hot tub
3. Grill some chicken

Let me tell you more about them.

## Work out
Today I will work out on my bike. My wife once said, and I quote:
> The earlier in the day you aim to do it, the more likely it is to happen.

## Sit in the hot tub
This will be relaxing. Maybe I will listen to a podcast there. Here are some recent favorites...
- Sound Expertise
- Sticky Notes
- Upgrade

My favorite podcast player is [Overcast](https://overcast.fm).

Once an app like Drafts or iA Writer converts the Markdown to rich text, it would look like this:

A good Markdown app like iA Writer will convert the syntax to rich text for you and copy it so that you can paste it into an application like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or your website.

A good Markdown app like iA Writer will convert the syntax to rich text for you and copy it so that you can paste it into an application like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or your website.

I could have just as easily exported the resulting rich text to a Word document or Google Doc and all of the formatting would have been properly executed.

iAWriter can also export my Markdown as HTML like this:

<h1>Blog Post Title</h1>

<p>Here are <em>three things</em> I want to do today.</p>

<ol>
<li>Work out</li>
<li>Sit in the hot tub</li>
<li>Grill some chicken</li>
</ol>

<p>Let me tell you more about them.</p>

<h2>Work out</h2>

<p>Today I will workout on my bike. My wife once said, and I quote:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The earlier in the day you aim to do it, the more likely it is to happen.</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>Sit in the hot tub</h2>

<p>This will be relaxing. Maybe I will listen to a podcast there. Here are some recent favorites...</p>

<ul>
<li>Sound Expertise</li>
<li>Sticky Notes</li>
<li>Upgrade</li>
</ul>

<p>My favorite podcast player is <a href="https://overcast.fm">Overcast</a>.</p>

Because Markdown can be converted to HTML automatically, I have found it less stressful to actually write my Canvas pages, announcements, and messages to parents in Markdown and then pasting the resulting HTML into the HTML editor of Canvas. I store my Markdown files in a folder of text files, with subfolders for each course. I have favorited these folders so that they are always accessible in the iA Writer sidebar. These folders are easily accessible. Because I am writing in plaintext, the result feels much more like writing in a simple note app than it does a word processor.

iA Writer links to folders of text files on your hard drive. But it looks like a simple note app.

iA Writer links to folders of text files on your hard drive. But it looks like a simple note app.

Here is an example of a Canvas announcement intended to be shared with one of my band classes early this fall. It contains an embedded Google Form families sign as an agreement to our policies. Markdown and HTML can be written in the same document and iA Writer treats it all as HTML when you export it.

I got the HTML embed straight from the Share menu of the Google Form setup. I didn't need to know any code to make this message!

On the left: a Markdown document that contains HTML code for a Google Form embed. On the right: pasting that as HTML into the HTML editor in Canvas.

On the left: a Markdown document that contains HTML code for a Google Form embed. On the right: pasting that as HTML into the HTML editor in Canvas.

How the resulting announcement appears to students.

How the resulting announcement appears to students.

EDIT: When I wrote this post, I fogtot to add one benefit to having all of these files on your computer… even though Canvas messages don’t support formatting like headings and bold, I draft those in iAWriter too. It is SO much easier to find and re-use old emails I have sent to parents when they are searchable from my computer. Have you ever tried to search your Canvas ‘Sent’ folder? It’s terrible! Local computer copies for the win!

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