[su_dropcap]T[/su_dropcap]his post is from a series of speaking engagements while I was at Ball State University for the 2015 Music for All Summer Symposium. The first clinic that I performed was titled Useful Online Technologies for Band Directors and focused (mostly) on cross-platform web-based technologies that pass my four-point criteria for implementing them in a classroom or with a program program:

1. Does the technology make you a better teacher?

2. Does the technology make you more efficient?

3. Does the technology make your students better learners or learn more efficiently?

4. Does the technology allow you to do something that you cannot do easily (or at all) without?

Productivity Breakers: Seven Habits YOU need to BREAK Now:

  1. STOP Multi-Tasking
    -Focus on completing the tasks at hand: Decide – which are the most important to complete now?
  2. STOP Making Excuses
    -Make yourself accountable to yourself – stop blaming others and circumstance for not completing tasks
  3. STOP Checking your devices every waking moment
    -Do you really need to know if something happened in your social media world in the last 30 seconds? Has your smartphone become a “digital leash”?
  4. STOP operating in a disorganized environment
    -Chaos cannot organize itself, nor can you work efficiently in chaos
  5. STOP Looking for entertainment
    -Do you really need to be entertained every minute of every day?  -can you accomplish something instead?  -are you more interested in escaping this life than living and contributing to the betterment of it?
  6. STOP Complaining
    -Complaining is a disease and needs to be eradicated -start being a part of the solution and not part of the problem
  7. STOP Doing things to a minimum level
    -half done is NOT done, poorly done is pathetic

Your Bad Habits only make you LESS productive. 

3 Steps to Optimizing your Productivity:

1. Don’t be Idle

2. Complete the most important task at hand

3. Start again with line item 1 above

The following is the list of websites that I covered in this presentation:

  1. BePartOfTheBand.com (Online advocacy for recruiting)
  2. Imslp.org (Petrucci Music Library)
  3. Partifi.org (From Score to Parts)
  4. Bandmusicpdf.org (Music from the Golden Age of the American Town Band)
  5. WindRep.org (Wind Repertory Project)
  6. MindforMusic.com (Jazz Transcriptions in PDF)
  7. ArmyFieldBand.com/perspectives (Jazz Ambassadors Education/Charts)
  8. Chromatik.com (Play along with sheet music)
  9. Noteflight.com (Score software)
  10. Musescore.org (Score software)
  11. Bgreco.net\band (Simple seating chart maker for band)
  12. MusicTheory.net (Music Theory Site)
  13. MusicFirst.com (Complete Cloud-solution for music classes)
  14. Edmodo.com (Collaborative Classroom/LMS)
  15. Remind.com (Text your students safely)
  16. Vicfirth.com/education (Percussion based resources)
  17. WhenIsGood.Net (Find a time for meetings)
  18. Pixlr.com (Online image Editing)
  19. YouTube.com/editor (Video Editor)
  20. Animoto.com (Slide to Video Creator)
  21. Spotify.com (Music Playlists made easy)
  22. Playlists.net (Add text to playlists on Spotify)
  23. FreePDFConvert.com (Convert to PDF Online)
  24. PDFprotect.net (PDF Securing)
  25. Bit.do (Readable URL Linking /w Tracking)
  26. Padlet.com (Post and share what is on your mind)
  27. Evernote.com (Possibly the best online notebook)
  28. Evernote.com/skitch (Image tracker/cutter)
  29. UnRoll.me (unsubscribed to your hundreds of e-mail newsletters)
  30. GetPocket.com (bookmark websites to read later w/o clutter)
  31. Spreeder.com (Read boring text, way faster)
  32. Minutes.io (Take minutes fast)
  33. Join.Me (Present online -no problem)
  34. SlideBean.com (Make presentations fast)

Google and Other Apps in my 3rd Presentation (Link will be here when posted).

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