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 5 Ways to use Canva's AI Tools in Your Classroom

July 23, 2024  /  Amy M. Burns

It's challenging to avoid the topic of AI in education these days, given its significant presence. Regardless of your personal stance on AI, it has become an integral part of our students' lives, including elementary students who likely interact with it in various ways. We've also incorporated AI into our own practices, such as using a track splitter to remove vocals or a website to edit photo backgrounds.

Considering the availability of Canva for Education as a free tool for K-12 educators, here are five AI Tools (or Magic Tools) found in Canva that educators can utilize to save time or enhance writing and other tasks.

Magic Write

If you ever wish to condense an email or a paragraph or refine the wording of a music class description, Canva’s Magic Write tools are perfect for this task. Simply insert your text into a Canva’s writing document or a text tool in a presentation template, select the text, and click on Magic Write. Explore various options to aid you in crafting emails, progress reports, curriculum descriptions, and more.

Blur Effects

We have all been in a situation where we would like to blur the students’ faces from a photo. With the Blur Effects tool, you can do this quickly and intuitively.

Need to blur a video? This can be done by uploading your video, going to the elements, and typing in the blur effect. There are some blur effects that you can place over your video to help blur out the video. Unfortunately, as of right now, there are no filters that I could find in Canva that would blur the video.

Background Remover

During the pandemic, one of my favorite sites was remove.bg to remove the background of my kitchen from the teaching photos that I was posting online. Then, when Canva added this to their effects, I was thrilled to have this all in one place. If you have not had your Canva upgraded, in August, the background remover will be easily accessible in the menu attached to each photo you add onto the screen.

Magic Grab

I love this tool for when I need to create headshots of our recent mini-musical, Stone Soup. I used Magic Grab to grab the character out of the poster. Then, I replaced it with the headshot of the student. These looked great on the wall outside of the auditorium.

Mockup Tool

I love this tool for when I create videos or manipulatives. You can place your photo on a computer screen, tablet, mobile phone, t-shirt, mug, and more! In the newest update, you can now place your photo on an item in a movie.

Bonus: Magic Media

Magic Media is a tool that one of its uses is it will draw what you write. If you are trying to create characters for a music story or a manipulative, you can type what you would like, click on the style of watercolor or drawing or pencil or photo, and then it will give you pictures you can choose from. Here are some that I asked Magic Media to create. It will also create videos! Here is an example of my Music Expectations for my youngest learners.

Check back, as I am always doing something weekly, whether it is a tech tip, a play-along video, a webinar, or ways to incorporate MusicFirst Elementary into the classroom!

Coming Soon!



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