Our theme for this month on the blog and podcast is iPads and in today's episode I'm going to talk about some of the useful accessories and adaptors that you and your students can use with iPads in order to expand their capabilities in the music classroom.

In my new GarageBand for iPad course, I've put together a whole module on this topic of accessories and extras that you can use with your iPad. In this episode I share just a few of things that I cover in that module:

How to connect

• Microphones
• Guitars
• Keyboards

In the course I also cover:

• Hands-free control of your iPad so your can turn sheet music pages or control apps
• Ways to share iPads among multiple students
• Options for mounting your iPad on mic stands and tripods
• Tips for displaying your iPad on screen and why Apple TV is not the best option
• Ways you can amplify your iPad

One of the more complex aspects to using the app is how to access the student GarageBand project files so that you can assess them.

When assessing work done in GarageBand, as a teacher you will generally want:

• to be able to hear the student's work
• to be able to see the GarageBand project - how many tracks were used, how were they arranged, whether the student has made an effort to adjust the levels of the tracks, which ones were created using software instruments (green regions) and which ones are audio (blue regions) and so on

Having both the audio and visual information makes it much easier to assess student work but what are the options for getting students to send their GarageBand iOS projects to you, the teacher?

In this episode of the Music Tech Teacher podcast I'll run through 5 possible ways.

We're back with another episode of the Music Tech Teacher podcast. We've had a bit of a break recently and I wanted to catch everyone up on what's been going on at Midnight Music recently, some special events that are coming along in the near future and I share a few tech-related things that I've been loving lately.

For a number of years now I've been using screencasting software to record my computer screen so that I can make tutorial videos, show someone how to fix something technical, provide feedback and assessment, answer a music tech question quickly, or capture student work on websites that don't have a save option.

There are many screencasting software applications available but in this episode of the Music Tech Teacher podcast I want to talk about Loom and why it's my favourite free option for music teachers.

Learn how you can make your own iPad video tutorials for students by using the inbuilt screen record function.

Youtube - it's a tech tool that's used almost daily by most music teachers. Today I'll share some simple keyboard shortcuts that will make your Youtube use a breeze (and make you look like a total tech ninja).

Discover the free, "works-on-any-device" online digital audio workstation Bandlab. Lauren Hendry Parsons is the Associate Vice President of Communications and Partnerships for Bandlab Technologies and she comes on the show to talk all things Bandlab.

John Mlynczak - the Managing Director of Noteflight - is a passionate advocate for music education and technology. John and I discuss Noteflight Learn and the new Noteflight Marketplace - where teachers can purchase sheet music in a notation file format that they can legally edit and arrange.

Marc Gelfo is the Co-Founder & CEO of Modacity - an app that aims to help musicians use their practice time efficiently and effectively. Marc and I discuss how Modacity works, what it's like to create a mobile app from scratch and tips for practicing more effectively.

Katie Miller, a K-5 music teacher at Hadfield School in Wisconsin, has had some great success running tech-based projects with her elementary students. Recent favourites include digital book reviews in which she showed students how to create soundtracks using GarageBand and a composition project where her grade 3 students composed for grade 3 students at another school in her district. Katie shares her successes during this episode.