Google Meet rolling out custom backgrounds

Google Meet rolling out custom background images for web – 9to5Google:

Google Meet continues its onslaught of pre-announced features today with the launch of custom backgrounds during video calls. This customization is a staple of modern conferencing apps, and one that helps convey “more of your personality.”

Another Google Meet feature playing catchup with Zoom. This has started rolling out in my school district but I don’t have the option in my account yet.

From what I have seen other students do, it appears to work as expected, maybe slightly less consistent at detecting the edges of a person than Zoom is.

Many of Google Meet’s “catchup” features of the past few months have been buggy, though I think I prefer them being this aggressive with updates than to drag their feet.

It will be interesting to see what Google can do with Meet that is actually unique to their companies strengths. The pandemic caught them by surprise and they have been rushing to keep up with the success of Zoom.

Google has always had too many communication apps, and has never seemed to know what to do with them (Google Hangouts, Duo, Allo, and a bunch of others that have been killed off). Google has a lot of potential with Meet and seems to be focusing on it with more intent since the pandemic forced many to work line.

Google has an education platform to rest on which Zoom doesn’t have. It would be interesting to see them make a move that better integrated Meet with Google Classroom and Docs. Hopefully, we will see them continue to focus on rapid development in the coming months, even after they have ”caught up” with many of Zoom’s popular features.

‘Music Quiz’ iPod Game Brought Back to Life Through Siri Shortcuts

This is from a while ago but I think many will appreciate it…

Apple revives classic ‘Music Quiz’ iPod game through the Shortcuts app on iOS 14 – 9to5Mac:

On the iPod, Music Quiz plays a number of songs in shuffle mode and it provides five different options for you to choose which song is playing. The shortcut version of this mini game on iOS 14 is quite similar, as it also plays random songs with five different answer options.

Music Quiz on iOS 14 is part of the “Starter Shortcuts” folder, which offers four different shortcuts that demonstrate what users can do with the app. In order to find and play Music Quiz on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 14 or iPadOS 14, just follow the steps below:

If you have not tried Siri Shortcuts on your phone yet, this is a fun way to test them out. It’s baked right in to your phone if you are running iOS 14.

This shortcut makes it really easy to dissect how one of these is built and play around with the logic a bit to better understand how you might build your own automations using similar building blocks.

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

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

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

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

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Topic include

the definition of multitasking
my love of quick entry and using a task inbox
how single item action lists are useful in the middle school band teaching environment
how to stay on top of more tasks than are actually possible to do in the day through use of tags and perspectives that filter out information only relevant to a particular context
Using the Drafts app for quickly capturing my thoughts, processing my tasks, and acting upon them in powerful ways
using project templates for larger projects like field trips and musical performances so that tasks don’t slip through the cracks
using Siri Shortcuts to turn data into variables and make a blog post, shared document, and OmniFocus project for creating an episode of the Music Ed Tech Talk podcast
Using DEVONthink to connect documents to projects and tasks in OmniFocus and keep things I want to “check out later” off of my todo list
putting widgets with charts that show a view of my day in OmniFocus on the Home Screen of my iPhone

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

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

🔗 New Features Coming to Noteflight Learn’s SoundCheck Integration

My school district purchased us some music tech services for use in our online classes this fall. I have been meaning to write at more length about Noteflight Learn and Soundtrap, but I am still getting my heels into the ground with them. Both services take time to learn how they are effective in practice, not to mention there are a lot of quirks with how they integrate with our learning management software, Canvas.

I did want to highlight some upcoming features to Noteflight Learn, specifically regarding their new SoundCheck integration which launched this past summer. My district purchased the SoundCheck integration which means that I can give Noteflight scores as assessments where my band students play the notes into the computer and get a score. Some of these forthcoming features are going to save me a lot of headaches and I am glad to see them coming.

Check out the full list in the blog post below from John Mlynczak. I have quoted some of my favorites.

SoundCheck Check One Two:

New Features Coming Soon

We are working on several new features to be made available ASAP. In the coming weeks, here is what you will see:

– The SoundCheck assessment rating will be automatically added to grade book of your own LMS, including Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, Powerschool, Brightspace, Blackboard, Moodle, and more.

– Students just need to complete their assignment and use the same “Turn In” button already available in Noteflight Learn.

– All Content Library scores will include a SoundCheck version that can be used right away. You can always edit a Content Library score and create your own SoundCheck version as well.

And the cherry on top for this iPad-loving, late-night, couch worker:

– iOS functionality. SoundCheck currently does not work in the browser on iOS.

More Jamboard in the Music Classroom (Testing The New Integration with Google Meet)

Google Meet rolling out Jamboard integration for collaborative whiteboarding | 9to5Google:

Last week, Google’s video conferencing tool launched a 49-person grid and background blur. Google Meet is now integrating with Jamboard to add a digital whiteboard for visual and collaborative brainstorming.

Google Jamboard, which I have blogged about here, is indeed a fun tool and all of my students find it engaging.

This new Google Meet integration is awesome. Once you start up a digital whiteboard from within a Meet, Jamboard asks you if you want to create a new one or use an existing file in your Google Drive. If you opt to create a new one, it automatically saves it to your drive and names it using the date and meet code of your session.

Immediately, a dialogue with share permissions for the file pops up, pre-filled with the accounts of all students who are present in the Meet so that you can make sure they all have access in one click.

The integration is very smooth. I tested it today at the beginning of my classes so that they could give feedback to one another on a recent Soundtrap project I had them do.

The students recorded brass duets and trios in Soundtrap projects last week. I played three examples of them for the class today and students posted sticky notes on this whiteboard that took me one minute to set up last night. It was a simple activity that was made even more simple by this new integration.

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Post Sticky Notes to Your Home Screen

Speaking of widgets on the iPhone home screen, this is one that I have a feeling a lot of people will appreciate.

Sticky Widgets allows you to post sticky notes straight to the home screen that come in different colors and say anything you want. The experience is as simple as you can imagine.

Sure, I advocate for using proper note-taking and task management software, but there are times where you just want to write something directly and trust that it will be plastered in front of your eyes indefinitely.

Check out a full review from MacStories…

Sticky Widgets Brings Simple Sticky Notes to Your Home Screen:

Sticky Widgets enables placing sticky note-style widgets on your iPhone or iPad Home Screen which can be modified simply by tapping on the widget. It’s utility that’s such an obvious fit for widgets, I’m surprised I haven’t seen a hundred other apps doing the same thing.

🔗 Google Meet starts rolling out 49-person grid view, background blur

Click below to read 9to5Google’s article about 49-person grid view and background blur, coming to Google Meet on the web.

Google Meet starts rolling out 49-person grid view, background blur:

As previewed last month, Google is starting to launch a handful of pre-announced features for Meet. Background blur and being able to see up to 49 people simultaneously is coming to Google Meet in the coming weeks.

This is going to be huge for teachers. Read the entire article. They explain how to set everything up once this feature rolls out to you.

🔗 Electronic Music School, with Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein

Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein have a new Twitch channel called Electronic Music School. Every Sunday at 5 pm, they go over lesson plans for teaching music technology, using Ableton Live.

Electronic Music School is LIVE at 5. Remixing methods with me and @ethanhein ft. this week’s special guest @spooploop. Join in the fun!https://t.co/oJipQJZo8a pic.twitter.com/iIwoIPNtSq

— Will Kuhn (@willkuhn) September 13, 2020

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Even though the technology part of my general music curriculum is limited, I have really enjoyed the few of these live streams I have caught little bits of. The visual presentation is very engaging, the guests are diverse, and the discussions are very relevant to the curricular challenges of teaching popular music.

Check it out here.

🔗 Handwriting Note App, GoodNotes, Gets Collaboration Features

From David Sparks…

GoodNotes Releases Collaboration Update — MacSparky:

With GoodNotes, it’s easy to mix drawing and writing. It’s also easy to write in a magnified view while the words simultaneously appear in a normal size on the page behind it.

And with yesterday’s version 5.5 update, GoodNotes is now also able to collaborate.

I use Apple Notes for most mixed media note taking (text, checklists, images, web links) and DEVONthink for my archiving needs (long term file, email, web archiving). But most notes I write by hand go in GoodNotes. It is nice to see any app add collaboration as a feature. I am not sure if I would use this in GoodNotes but it will be fun to try.

The other thing I use GoodNotes for every day (when school is meeting in person) is for annotating my custom-made seating charts to keep track of student data. You can read about that on this article I wrote for SBO Magazine. What makes GoodNotes so convenient for annotating PDFs like this is that it treats them as a paper style instead of fillable PDF, so you don’t need to go into any kind of annotation ‘mode’ to begin marking it up with the Apple Pencil.

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🔗 New Version of Final Cut Pro X Has a 90 Day Free Trial (Which You Can Renew Even if You Already Took Advantage of the FCPX 90 Day Free Trial!)

New version of Final Cut Pro X out!

From Apple Newsroom:

Final Cut Pro X updated with significant workflow improvements:

Today Apple is updating Final Cut Pro X with powerful new features designed to enhance remote workflows and speed up editing for content creators. Improvements in creating and managing proxy media provide editors with portability and performance when working with large resolution formats, or when collaborating remotely. New social media tools automate video cropping in square, vertical, and other custom sizes for popular social media platforms, and new workflow improvements enhance the versatility and performance of Final Cut Pro — making the Mac stronger than ever for all video editors and motion graphics artists.

Teachers rejoice! If you are looking to make online lesson content or virtual band/orchestra/choir/whatever videos this school year, look no further than Final Cut Pro X.

If you were already taking advantage of their 90 day free trial, guess what? They just released a new version, and you can renew your trial with the update!

There’s a 90-day free trial for Final Cut Pro 10.4.9 if you want to check it out/train yourself up.

(Yes, even if you used the 90-day free trial on the previous version — whole new free trial for the new version!)https://t.co/5V1DLdUE2P pic.twitter.com/Sb7cICXAot

— Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) August 26, 2020

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And if you decide to buy, don’t forget to purchase it with Apple’s Pro Apps Bundle for Education.