How Is Apple’s Keynote Stacking Up in the Age of Online Learning?

In the age of online learning, the teaching world is embracing Google Docs even more than ever. Google Slides are all the rage, especially in combination with the great ecosystem of Chrome Extensions like Flat for Docs and Peardeck.

I love the extensibility of web-based software, but I feel more at home using native apps like Microsoft Office and Apple's iWork. These apps feel like they belong on the operating system, they function reliably offline, have great keyboard shortcuts, more professional features, and great designs. 

I am spending less time creating documents for my classes this year as things have moved to online Canvas content, Noteflight scores, and Soundtrap templates. There is a lesser need for my usual rosters, seating charts, posters, and other data that I create in native software. Presenting information online is still as relevant as ever though, and for that, I am finding that Apple's Keynote is still the tool for the job. 

No, I can't add a Peardeck to my Keynote presentations, but I can access them from a web browser and share them with my colleagues, where we can both be editing the same presentation at the same time, just like a Google Slides presentation.

I am using Google Slides for some things (notably, the extensions above), but Keynote is still my go-to app. It gives me more speed, more control, better templates, and fine integration across Apple’s ecosystem. If I edit a slide on my Mac, for example, that presentation even becomes quickly launchable from the Files widget on my iPadOS home screen for further editing.

Widgets on the left side of my iPad homescreen allow me to see recent data across all my apps including timers, calendars, tasks, recent notes, and recently opened documents across all my devices! It’s fair for me to mention that while this works more reliably with documents stored in iCloud, I have been noticing my Google Docs starting to show up in this Files widget. Horray!

Keynote recently received two updates that make it even better for teaching online. 

Running a Presentation in a Two Monitor Setup Without Overtaking Both Screens

I run two monitors for my online classes. The one on the left is used in combination with Open Broadcasting Software to quickly share my screen without fiddling with options inside of Google Meet or Zoom. Until recently, running a Keynote presentation would overtake both monitors, rendering it useless for my secondary screen, where I watch over the Google Meet, and interact with other software. 

Now through using an option in the Menubar called Play Slideshow in Window, Keynote can run in a standalone window, which can be put into full-screen mode and only take up one monitor. You can also right-click the Toolbar and permanently add an option to present this way. See these options in the gifs below.

Now, I can run this on the monitor I share with students and have them enter my class to a rotation of slides, while I do unrelated tasks on my other display.

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

Embed YouTube Videos Into Slides

One of the last standing reasons I loved using Google Slides was because you could embed videos from websites like YouTube and Vimeo right into the slides and have them play with an internet connection. If you show a lot of YouTube to your class, this is way faster than downloading YouTube videos to your hard drive and then embedding those into Keynote or Powerpoint (although, the Downie app makes this process very easy).

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Now that Keynote can embed YouTube videos right into a slide, I can save a lot of time, and space! I have the entire Breathing Gym video series in one of my slide shows, and the storage really adds up!

I play a “Friday Video Feature” for my students every Friday, usually pertaining to some kind of educational goal, but sometimes just a short, fun, video. I used to save these on my hard drive, and at one point, I archived them in Evernote, but now I think I am just going to leave a year’s worth of my favorites embedded YouTube videos right into the same presentation I run for the class each day so that I can pull them up on command.

Overall I am pleased with the results I get in Keynote, particularly how good the final presentations look. Some of these recent updates, particularly the YouTube support, seem related to Apple’s understanding that their education users are probably depending on the web more. If that’s the case, I am curious to see what else they have in the pipeline for iWork.

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Automating Band Warmups, Teaching Auditory Skill, and Managing My Classroom… with Solfege Bingo

“Intuition, I realized, was the certainty with which a skill instantly worked on the basis of rational experience. Without training, intuition does not develop. People only think that intuition is inborn. If intuition unexpectedly reveals itself, however, it is because unconscious training has been amassed somewhere along the way.
”

— Shinichi Suzuki , Nutured by Love

What is Solfege Bingo

Solfege Bingo is a game for young music students. You can play in class to help develop audiation, pitch recognition, and solfege.

The book comes with a series of bingo cards, each of which with three-note Solfege patterns in each square. “Do re mi, fa sol do, etc...” With the book comes a CD that has many different recorded examples of a singer singing these patterns, with space in between each pattern. Students match the three-note patterns they hear with the ones on their card until they get bingo.

The CD features a second set of recorded examples in which a clarinet plays the patterns so that the students must recognize the patterns by ear, not by syllable.

I first learned about this series as a student teacher, where the choir teacher would use them as warm-ups. She would use them as ear training examples to familiarize her ensembles with solfege. On the recorded examples, the space between each pattern is equal to the length of the patterns themselves, so you can use them as a call and response. The recording models the pattern, the choir sings it back.

Transposing the Tracks for Bands and Adding a Drone

A few years ago, I got the idea to transpose these recordings into band keys using GarageBand. I added a clarinet drone on the key center (using one of the software MIDI instruments) to help students hear the relationships of the pitches not only to each other but also to the tonic. 

In band, I start the year by implementing these play-along tracks during warm-ups, starting in concert Bb. I first use the vocalist track and have students sing back. Then they play it back, with brass buzzing on mouthpieces. Then with brass on instruments. (The repetition of this has the side effect of reinforcing fingerings.) Eventually, once I feel like they have begun to internalize the pitches, I play them the clarinet version of the recording. The clarinet drone rings through my entire track, which takes the place of my usual Tonal Energy Tuner drone.

It sounds like this when it’s done…

In GarageBand, I dragged in the audio file I wanted to edit, creating an audio track. Then, I created a second software instrument track, selected clarinet as the instrument, and held out the note Bb on my MIDI keyboard for the drone. Double-clicking an audio region reveals a transpose option on the left. Dragging the slider moves the pitch up of the selected region up or down by a semitone.

Classroom Management (Making Two of Me)

I recall a year where I was struggling with engaging one of my band classes during the warm-ups. I needed a way to create some structure and reinforce expectations for the first 10 minutes of class, while making sure that the winds got the tone and ear development I wanted them to have. It is always easy to assume that students are against you when they are talking amongst themselves, wandering the back of the room, and slouching in their seats. I have come to find that, more often than not, my students aren’t against me, they just flat out didn’t understand my expectations for participation, posture, and technique and that they needed my support (even when it seems my expectations should be obvious). 

My solution was to duplicate myself. I needed there to be one of me on the podium guiding the rehearsal sequence, and another of me walking the room to adjust students’ expectations of themselves.

I added the Solfege Bingo play-along tracks to slides in my daily agenda presentation, which is always on display at the front of the room through a projector. I make all of my slides in Apple’s Keynote. I found that I could embed an mp3 of one of my tracks into a slide and set the presentation to automatically skip to the next slide after a certain length of time had passed. So I created a sequence of these Solfege Bingo tracks, and a couple of other typical warm-ups I do, and embedded them all in Keynote slides so that the warm-up would happen automatically. 

In the upper right corner, click the Transitions button to reveal transitions. From the Start Transition dropdown menu, you can choose to have a slide start automatically after a certain amount of time, using the Delay timer. You might have to tweak this a little bit to get it right, but the result is that these couple of Keynote slides play in a row, automatically, while I walk around the band room and give feedback to students.

This allows me to work the room. While warm-ups were taking place, I can walk in the percussion section and remind them what instrument they play for warm-ups that day (it's on the chart in the back of the room 🤷‍♂️). I can give postural feedback to my trombones. I can high five the tuba player. I can fit someone for a concert shirt. I can do nearly anything. And this is all while reinforcing audiation, tone development, and proper intonation.

I recommend the Solfege Bingo book. It’s effortless to modulate tracks with software. You can use the pitch-flex feature in GarageBand, as I mentioned above. But you can also use apps like Transcribe!, The Amazing Slow Downer, or Anytune. 

Adding a clarinet drone is easy. I added a software instrument track in GarageBand, set it to a clarinet, and played the tonic along to the recording. But you could also use Tonal Energy as a GarageBand instrument.

Conclusion

Given the time I am posting this, it is worth mentioning that I totally intend to use these warmup play-along tracks in my online band classes this fall, which will be taking place in Google Meet. I am using the Loopback app to route the audio of Keynote through to the call, and a soundboard app called Farrago to trigger them. I can run the tracks through Google Meet and everyone plays along while on mute. I am hoping to blog about Farrago soon.

I am also planning to blog about another version of this workflow I have tried in especially needy classrooms, where I go as far as to record myself giving instructions to the band in between transitions, and even program the tracks to rehearse concert music for me while the real ‘me’ works the room. I have run up to 40 minutes of a band rehearsal through pre-recorded instructions and play along tracks before!

Get a copy of Solfege Bingo here.

My Online Teaching Setup (High-Tech Edition)

My studio computer and associated hardware.

When school let out in March, I wrote My Very Straightforward and Very Successful Setup for Teaching Virtual Private Lessons. The impetus for this post, and its snarky title, was an overwhelming number of teachers I saw on Facebook fussing about what apps and hardware they should use to teach online when all you really need is a smartphone, FaceTime, and maybe a tripod.

I stand by that post. But there are also reasons to go high-tech. I have had a lot of time this summer to reflect on the coming fall teaching semester. I have been experimenting with software and hardware solutions that are going to make my classes way more engaging.

Zoom

I have been hesitant about Zoom. I still have reservations about their software. Yet, it is hard to resist how customizable their desktop version is. I will be using Google Meet for my public school classes in September, but for my private lessons, I have been taking advantage of Zoom’s detailed features and settings.

For example, it’s easier to manage audio ins and outs. Right from the chat window, I can change if my voice input is going through my Mac's internal microphone or my studio microphone, or if video is coming from my laptop webcam or my external Logitech webcam. This will also be useful for routing audio from apps into the call (we will get to that in a moment).

Zoom allows you to choose the audio/video input from right within the call.

Zoom also allows you to AirPlay the screen of an iOS device to the student as a screen sharing option. This is the main reason I have been experimenting with Zoom. Providing musical feedback is challenging over an internet-connected video call. Speaking slowly helps to convey thoughts accurately, but it helps a lot more when I say “start at measure 32” and the student sees me circle the spot I want them to start in the music, right on their phone.

You can get really detailed by zooming in and out of scores and annotating as little as a single note. If you are wondering, I am doing all of this on a 12.9 inch iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, using the forScore app. A tight feedback loop of “student performance—>teacher feedback—>student adjustment” is so important to good teaching, and a lot of it is lost during online lessons. It helps to get some of it back through the clarity and engagement of annotated sheet music.

Selecting AirPlay as a screen sharing option.

AirPlaying annotated sheet music to the Zoom call using the iPad Pro and forScore app.

As much as I love this, I still think Zoom is pretty student hostile, particularly with the audio settings. Computers already try to normalize audio by taking extreme louds and compressing them. Given that my private lessons are on percussion instruments, this is very bad. Zoom is the worst at it of all the video apps I have used. To make it better, you have to turn on an option in the audio settings called “Use Original Audio” so that the host hears the student’s raw sound, not Zoom’s attempt to even it out. Some of my students report that they have to re-choose this option in the “Meeting Settings” of each new Zoom call.

If this experiment turns out to be worth it for the sheet music streaming, I will deal with it. But this is one of the reasons why I have been using simple apps like FaceTime up until this point.

My Zoom audio settings.

My Zoom advanced audio settings.

Sending App Audio Directly to the Call

I have been experimenting with a few apps by Rogue Amoeba that give me more control over how audio is flowing throughout my hardware and software.

Last Spring, I would often play my public school students YouTube videos, concert band recordings from Apple Music, and warm-up play-alongs that were embedded in Keynote slides. I was achieving this by having the sound of these sources come out of my computer speakers and right back into the microphone of my laptop. It actually works. But not for everyone. And not well.

Loopback is an app by Rogue Amoeba that allows you to combine the audio input and output of your various microphones, speakers, and apps, into new single audio devices that can be recognized by the system. I wrote about it here. My current set up includes a new audio device I created with Loopback which combines my audio interface and a bunch of frequently used audio apps into one. The resulting device is called Interface+Apps. If I select it as the input in my computer’s sound settings, then my students hear those apps and any microphone plugged into my audio interface directly. The audio quality of my apps is therefore more pure and direct, and there is no risk of getting an echo or feedback effect from my microphone picking up my computer speaker’s sound.

A Loopback device I created which combines the audio output of many apps with my audio interface into a new, compound device called “Interface+Apps.”

I can select this compound device from my Mac’s Sound settings.

Now I can do the following with a much higher level of quality...

• Run a play-along band track and have a private student drum along
• Play examples of professional bands for my band class on YouTube
• Run Keynote slides that contain beats, tuning drones, and other play-along/reference tracks
• and...

Logic Pro X

Logic Pro X is one of my apps routing through to the call via Loopback. I have a MIDI keyboard plugged into my audio interface and a Roland Octopad electronic drum pad that is plugged in as an audio source (though it can be used as a MIDI source too).

The sounds on the Roland Octopad are pretty authentic. I have hi-hat and bass drum foot pedal triggers so I can play it naturally. So in Logic, I start with an audio track that is monitoring the Octopad, and a software instrument track that is set to a piano (or marimba or xylophone, whatever is relevant). This way, I can model drum set or mallet parts for students quickly without leaving my desk. The audio I produce in Logic is routed through Loopback directly into the call. My students say the drum set, in particular, sounds way better in some instances than the quality of real instruments over internet-connected calls. Isn’t that something...

Multiple Camera Angles

Obviously, there is a reason I have previously recommended a set up as simple as a smartphone and a tripod stand. Smartphones are very portable and convenient. And simple smartphone apps like FaceTime and Google Duo make a lot of good default choices about how to handle audio without the fiddly settings some of the more established “voice conference” platforms are known for.

Furthermore, I can’t pick up my desk and move it to my timpani or marimba if I need to model something. So I have begun experimenting with multiple camera angles. I bought a webcam back in March (it finally just shipped). I can use this as a secondary camera to my laptop’s camera (Command+Shift+N in Zoom to change cameras).

Alternatively, I can share my iPhone screen via AirPlay and turn on the camera app. Now I can get up from my desk and go wherever I need to. The student sees me wherever I go. This option is sometimes laggy.

Alternatively, I can log in to the call separately on the iPhone and Mac. This way, there are two instances of me, and if I need to, I can mute the studio desk microphone, and use the phone microphone so that students can hear me wherever I go. I like this option the best because it has the added benefit of showing me what meeting participants see in Zoom.

Logging in to the Zoom call on the Mac and iPhone gives me two different camera angles.

SoundSource

This process works well once it is set up. But it does take some fiddling around with audio ins and outs to get it right. SoundSource is another app by Rogue Amoeba that takes some of the fiddly-ness out of the equation. It replaces the sound options in your Mac’s menubar, offering your more control and more ease at the same time.

This app is seriously great.

This app saved me from digging into the audio settings of my computer numerous times. In addition to putting audio device selection at a more surface level, it also lets you control the individual volume level of each app, apply audio effects to your apps, and more. One thing I do with it regularly is turn down the volume of just the Zoom app when my students play xylophone.

Rogue Amoeba's apps will cost you, but they are worth it for those who want more audio control on the Mac. Make sure you take advantage of their educator discount.

EDIT: My teaching set up now includes the use of OBS and an Elago Stream Deck. Read more here.

Conclusion

I went a little overboard here. If this is overwhelming to you, don't get the idea that you need to do it all. Anyone of these tweaks will advance your setup and teaching.

This post is not specific about the hardware I use. If you care about the brands and models of my gear, check out My Favorite Technology to read more about the specific audio equipment in my setup.

🎬 My Online Learning Welcome Video

Teachers in my district were tasked with making a welcome video introducing students to the first week of distance learning.

After denying several times that I would put any serious effort into this project, I inevitably got carried away and spiraled down a rabbit hole of apps, workflows, and tricks. Musicians and teachers are feeling a special kind of hunger right now to be creative. I am thankful for software and internet connected tools that help me to communicate in a unique way.

First, enjoy the video below:

The video was produced with the following software:

Apple Clips App

(Download here) 

Apple Clips App might be the only one of these apps you need. It is a free Apple app that is kind of like a cross between iMovie and Photo Booth. Its intended purpose is to make quick, engaging videos, designed to be shared in the age of Instagram Stories.

Clips is how I got my Memoji head to appear on my body. It will also automatically caption your video for you. It can bring in numerous effects, call outs, emoji, backdrops, and can even do still images of words. You could make a video that accomplishes the same general effects as mine in next to zero effort using only Clips. 

Clips allows you to integrate Animoji, Filters, Text, Stickers, and Emoji to your live video.

Clips automatically adds captions in a style you like. You can edit them after the fact.

You can record yourself speaking over static posters to communicate information in an engaging way.

iMessage

iMessage is where I made my Memoji. It is also another place that you can get a Memoji head on top of your body (see screenshots below). I used this method for a few scenes in the video, instead of Clips, because it can shoot in landscape view. Clips produces square video only.

An alternate way to film yourself with a Memoji head is to open up a text message conversation to someone or yourself.

Select the camera icon right above the keyboard, and then tap the effect button in the lower left corner.

Next, select the Animoji icon, and then select your own Memoji.

Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut is an industry standard video editor. It is currently free for 90 days. If you know iMovie and want to go deeper, this will be the easiest option for you. 

I used Final Cut to dump all of my audio, video, and photo assets, and to mix them all down into the final product. I didn’t use Final Cut to do anything iMovie can’t do except for the fancy moment where multiple videos show up on top of the main video at once (and it was very important to me that it do this).

ScreenFlow 

(Download here)

ScreenFlow is like the iMovie of making screencasts. It can do fancy video automations and call out things happening on the screen (like mouse clicks, taps, type our whatever your keyboard is doing, etc…)

ScreenFlow’s editing tools are almost as easy as iMovie and it is so powerful, I probably could have probably made the entire video in it. There is a free version if you don’t mind a watermark on the final product.

Keynote

Keynote is what I used to make the nice slides with information. I used ScreenFlow to record my screen as I tabbed through the presentation in time along to an audio recording of my voice over.

Logic Pro

Apple’s premiere audio editing software. Free for 90 days right now. If you have used GarageBand, the basics of Logic will feel familiar to you. I used it to record some of the voice overs in the video but it is frankly unnecessary. I just wanted to use my nicer microphone and it happened to be plugged into the Mac I already use to edit audio in Logic.

Downie

(Download here)

Downie is how I downloaded some video and audio assets from the web to my Mac’s hard drive. 

Permute

(Download here)

This is a beautiful and fuss-free Mac app that converts video and audio from one file format to another.

Prompt Lite for iPad

(Download here)

This free teleprompter allows you to write a script and have it appear in large text on your iPad’s screen. It automatically paces through the words as you read them.

Others

I also used OmniOutliner to outline the original ideas, BBEdit to write the script, and YouTube to publish, but those are largely unnecessary. 

If this seems overwhelming, I assure you that you could make close to the same result in just iMovie or Apple Clips with next to zero effort. I have been locked inside for weeks and wanted to learn some of the skills required to polish up a video in Final Cut. I hope you enjoyed it.

🔀 Guest post: 10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music

This month I wrote a guest post for Midnight Music, an awesome blog and website designed to equip music teachers with technology knowledge and resources.

The post includes about 10 of the productivity apps I use to create, organize, and collaborate on lesson plans in the music classroom. The list covers some of the web tools and native iOS/Mac apps that are most indispensable to my work as a teacher.

Click the link below to head on over to Midnight Music and read the whole thing.

10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music:

Everyone likes to organize themselves differently. Teachers prefer different tools, organization methods, and preference over how much of their workflow is digital. Whatever your approach, there are a handful of great apps that can help you create your plans, search them, group them, and collaborate on them. The following apps are some of my favorite tools for managing lesson ideas, plans and resources.

Many of them have similar features as one another, but all of them have unique strengths. My philosophy is that there is always a better and more specific tool for the job.

Brief Thoughts on Apple’s Education Event

Well it has taken me long enough… This past week, Apple held an education event. Below are some brief thoughts on the subject. Chris Russell is coming on my podcast later this week to talk about all of the details. Keep in mind, I do not work in a school with 1:1 iPads or any kind of deployment strategy. But I am very seriously invested in Apple’s role in education and their vision for how their products fit into the classroom.

New iPad

This device looks great. Adding the Apple Pencil to this model will be an asset for schools. But will schools really pay 89 dollars for a pencil after just having purchased numerous 250 dollar iPads? 

The thing that gets me most excited about this device is its consumer potential. I am tempted to buy one for myself as a (more) mobile counterpart to my larger 12.9 inch iPad Pro.

iWork Updates

Apple Pencil support. FINALLY. This was my favorite announcement of the day. I anticipate editing Pages documents, scribbling on bus attendance lists made in Numbers, and annotating Keynote slides at the front of the classroom on a daily basis. I hate to be cynical (which the rest of this post will be), but Microsoft Office for iPad has had the ability to write on documents with an Apple Pencil since the Apple Pencil launched, two years ago. 

iBooks Author

Seems like the Mac app is no longer going to receive development. All book publishing features have been moved to Pages for iOS and Mac. It doesn’t appear that the new feature does everything that iBooks Author can do. Hopefully this is like when Apple rewrote Final Cut Pro X, took away some features, but then eventually added them back. Or when iWork was rewritten to be the same for iOS and macOS, stripping AppleScript features from the Mac, but eventually bringing them back. I would hate to see iBook authors unable to use workflows they have in the past using iBooks Author for the Mac. 

Classroom App for Mac

Apple’s learning management system comes to the Mac. Great! But what took so long? And can Apple keep up with the vastly more mature and flexible Google Classroom? (See conclusion below)

School Work App

An app for teachers to give assignments to students, check their progress, and collect it back. School Work can route students to other apps to do their assignments using the ClassKit API which is very cool. But why is this separate from the Classroom app? And where does iTunes U fit into all of this?

Conclusion

Apple is making a lot of solid efforts here but a lot of it it feels like too little too late, especially the student and learning management software. I really do hope they can keep up with Google Classroom who has been eating everyone’s lunch for years. Apple will have to be aggressive about adding new features to all of these new apps and making sure that their app ecosystem is flexible enough to compete with Chromebooks which use browser based software. Yes, there are way more apps on the App Store than there are Chrome based apps, but in education (and especially in music education) a lot of the big players are writing for Chrome OS. To me, the draw of Chromebooks in education is not their price, but the flexibility of web based software.

Apple’s software engineers seem spread very thin and unable to balance the release of various applications, consistently over time. This is true of many of Apple’s consumer apps. Mail and Reminders, two tentpole productivity apps have fallen way behind the competition. Calendar has not seen any more than a few major feature updates since I started using the Mac back in 2006. Apple’s apps are part of the “nice” factor of being in the ecosystem. Sometimes an app like Notes will get some major new features, but then we won’t hear from it for a few years. Google’s apps, by contrast, lack the same design sense, but are constantly being updated with new features. And they are not locked into annual OS updates like iOS is. In my opinion, this is Apple’s biggest problem right now.

Ironically, software is still my draw to Apple products. Even though their hardware is the most indisputably good thing they are doing right now (I am nearly without complaint of my iPhone X and the iPad 10.5 is perfect), it is the software that locks me in. In other words, I am much more committed to macOS and iOS than I am Mac and iPhone. This leaves me with some long term concern about my interest in continuing to use Apple products. And great concern about any educational institution who jumps on the iPad bandwagon just because apps are bright and colorful and demo well on stage. Apple has to show continual support for their education software if their dream for the classroom is to come true.