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.

Filtering by Category: Middle School

In the Mood Play-Along (Advanced) for Jazz Appreciation Month

April 10, 2023  /  Amy M. Burns

This new play-along is challenging! The tempo is quick, there are a lot of chromatic notes, the rhythm has a lot of playing on the offbeats, and the play-along encourages one to look ahead when performing it. I would highly suggest slowing down the tempo on YouTube by clicking on the settings choosing the “Playback speed” and slowing it down to 0.75 or 0.50.” Or use the “Transpose ▲▼ pitch ▹ speed ▹ loop for videos” Chrome extension that will allow you to change the pitch and key of most YouTube videos. In addition, I would use the screenshots/file found here in the blog post so that your students can practice this before trying it with the video.

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categories / Boomwhackers, #edtech, Elementary, High School, Grade 5, Grade 4, Middle School, Play-Along Videos, YouTube, Jazz
tags / #middleschool, #elementarymusicteacherlife, #jazzappreciationmonth, #boomwhackers, #playalong

Canva's "Brand New Era" and Examples of it used for Music Class

March 28, 2023  /  Amy M. Burns

Canva’s “Brand New Era” was launched this past week. If you noticed, Canva had ten gift-wrapped boxes that when you unwrapped them, showed you some new tools and fun tutorials for you to use to explore those tools. As I worked my way through the tutorials, I realized that many of these will be useful in our music classrooms. Here are some ways to use these new items. Check out the blog and webinar video to see some examples and ideas on how to use these new features in the music classroom.

To check out more, read Canva’s blog here or check out a deep dive here when they launched it this week.

Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech/

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categories / #edtech, #elmusedtech, Canva, Elementary, Middle School, High School, Tech Tip, Webinar
tags / #elmused, #elementarymusicteacher, #free, #edtech, #elementarymusicteacherlife, #middleschool, #highschool, #elementary, #canva

Two Tech Tips: Mirror a Video

February 12, 2023  /  Amy M. Burns

These are two tips that let you change a video so that it is mirrored. This is helpful for any movement videos or choreography videos where you need to mirror the teacher on the screen and they are using the terms left and right. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech Tools Used: https://www.mirrorthevideo.com/ https://clipchamp.com/en/

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categories / #edtech, #elmusedtech, Free!, Elementary, Middle School, Webinar, YouTube, Tech Tip
tags / #techtip, #elmused, #elementarymusicteacher, #youtube, #free, #elementarymusicteacherlife, #mused, #middleschool, #highschool, #elementary

Countdown to 2023-10 Tech Tools or Tips for Elementary and Middle School General Music: #2 The trick of adding - between the t and the u in the URL

December 31, 2022  /  Amy M. Burns

#2 The trick of adding - between the t and the u in the URL

This is a quick video for #2. And “oldie but goodie” tip.

This is a trick that sometimes works, but not all of the time. To make the YouTube video become full screen with no ads, no comments, and no videos that will play right after, take the YouTube video’s URL that you would like to show, add a - between the t and u, and refresh the screen.

There are a lot of other ways to do this. Another way is to load the YouTube video you would like to show, click on the share button, and click on embed. A large iframe code appears. Click copy and paste the iframe into a new tab. Look for where the https begins and the URL ends, usually with letters. Delete the other items so you have a URL in the tab. Click refresh and the video is now embedded onto the screen with no ads, comments, etc.

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categories / #edtech, #elmusedtech, Free!, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4, Grade 5, Kindergarten, Middle School, Webinar, YouTube
tags / #free, #YouTube, #elmused, #middleschool, #elementarymusicteacher, #elementarymusicteacherlife, #mused

NJAIS Innovation and Collaboration Conference Day 2

August 10, 2022  /  Amy M. Burns

It was another inspiring day at the New Jersey Association for Independent Schools (NJAIS) Innovation and Collaboration Conference! There were thought-provoking sessions and a wonderful keynote address. Here are my takeaways from Day 2, how some can be implemented personally and how some can be implemented in elementary music.

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categories / #elmusedtech, Elementary, High School, Middle School, PD
tags / #elmused, #NJAIS, #edtech, #summerpd, #elmused tech

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