Amy M. Burns

Elementary Music Technology and Integration

Amy M. Burns has taught PreK-grade 4 general music for over 25 years at Far Hills Country Day School (FH) (https://www.fhcds.org/). She also teaches grade 5 instrument class, directs the FH Philharmonic, is the Performing Arts Department Manager, and teaches privately in the after-school conservatory after being the director for over 20 years. She has authored four books and numerous articles on how to integrate tech into the elementary music classroom. She has presented many sessions on the topic, including four keynote addresses in TX, IN, St. Maarten, and AU. She is the recipient of the 2005 Technology in Music Education (TI:ME) Teacher of the Year, the 2016 New Jersey Music Educators Association (NJMEA) Master Music Teacher, the 2016 Governor’s Leader in Arts Education, and the 2017 NJ Nonpublic School Teacher of the Year Awards. Her most recent publication, Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches (2020), published by Oxford University Press (OUP) is available from OUP and Amazon. Burns is also the Community Coordinator for Midnight Music (MMC) at https://midnightmusic.com/, the General Music Chair for NJMEA Board of Directors, and the Elementary Music Consultant for MusicFirst (https://www.musicfirst.com/), a company built by music educators for music educators, dedicated to helping music teachers and their students make the most of technology in the classroom.

#techtiptuesday Have You Checked Out Futurepedia?

August 13, 2024  /  Amy M. Burns

Have you checked out Futurepedia? This past week, I enjoyed attending the NJAIS Innovation Conference, and the final keynote speaker, Christina Lewellen, MBA, CAE, gave an address titled “Educational Leadership in the Age of AI: Leveraging AI with Tools, Policy, and Strategy.”

One of the tools she demonstrated is Futurepedia when finding the most popular and featured AI Tools.

What is Futurepedia?

Futurepedia is a well-known online platform that focuses on AI tools, technology trends, and futuristic innovations. It acts as an extensive AI tool directory, providing in-depth descriptions, user feedback, and the most recent developments in AI and related areas. Through the platform, users can browse a variety of tools grouped by their functionalities like image creation, text processing, data analysis, and others. It is especially beneficial for individuals aiming to remain up-to-date with advanced technology and to find new tools that can boost productivity, creativity, and innovation.

Why Would Music Educators like Futurepedia?

One of the categories in Futurepedia is AI Audio Generators. There are currently 112 music AI tools listed. When looking at the editor’s pick you find free, freemium, and paid tools. The featured tools are:

  • Stable Audio - Stable Audio by Stability AI is an AI tool that creates high-quality audio from text. Music teachers benefit by creating custom teaching materials, adding soundtracks to educational content, facilitating student projects, inspiring creativity, and providing accessibility to various musical styles without expensive equipment. I used it to create a short snippet of music to the prompt, “elementary music class for creating, performing, responding, and connecting to music.

  • Soundraw - Soundraw is an AI music generator for creating custom, royalty-free tracks suitable for users with varying musical experiences. Music teachers can use Soundraw for educational content creation, teaching composition and music theory, customizing practice tracks, inspiring creativity, integrating into classroom projects, and providing accessibility to various sounds and styles without needing expensive equipment.

  • Mubert - Mubert is an AI music streaming platform that creates personalized, royalty-free music streams in real-time. It is versatile for various applications, including serving as background music, teaching music composition, inspiring student projects, creating soundscapes, providing royalty-free music for content creation, and encouraging musical exploration in the classroom. I was fascinated by how it interpreted a picture into music, especially when I uploaded a picture of the Mona Lisa.

If you are interested in AI tools, I encourage you to check out Futurepedia today!

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