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 instrumental class, directs the FH Modern Band, is the Performing Arts Department Manager, and teaches privately in the after-school conservatory, having served as director for over 20 years. She has authored four books and numerous articles on integrating technology 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, the 2017 NJ Nonpublic School Teacher of the Year, and the 2026 NJMEA Distinguished Service Awards. Her most recent publication, Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches (2020), is available from Oxford University Press (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.

Looking for my YouTube Channel or the manipulatives for my Play-Along Videos? Click the social feed buttons below!

Grab an Instrument and Join Us This Wednesday!

October 06, 2026  /  Amy M. Burns

Looking for fresh ideas to get your elementary music students playing and making music? Join us this Wednesday, October 7, at 7:30 p.m. ET for Fun with Classroom Instruments, a free, interactive MusicFirst Elementary webinar.

Keep a ukulele, recorder, barred instrument, Boomwhacker, or another classroom instrument nearby and play along with us! We’ll explore practical activities you can bring into your music classroom, whether your students are just beginning or are ready for a new challenge.

🎁 Join us live for a chance to win! We’ll have giveaways for a Studio 49 glockenspiel from Teaching With Orff and Boomwhackers—available to live attendees.

Come ready to play, explore, and leave with ideas for your next music lesson!

👉 Register for the free webinar

Fun with Classroom Instruments: Bring Your Instrument and Play Along With Us!
Wednesday, October 7 • 7:30 p.m. ET

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Autumn Medley Body Percussion/Movement Play-Along Video

October 04, 2026  /  Amy M. Burns

This week’s play-along video is one that focuses on movements and rhythms so that you can choose how to use them in your classroom. In the States, Autumn begins this week. I chose a medley of songs that include the months of September and October, and the seasonal weather that is associated with fall in certain parts of the world. This video does not mention Halloween or pumpkins, but more in the lines of leaves and the weather becoming colder.

The songs are:

Added to the blog this year are the digital manipulatives and ideas on how to perform this with students.

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

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Canva or Google Slides for Elementary Music? What I Use in 2026

September 27, 2026  /  Amy M. Burns

Canva or Google Slides—which works better in an elementary music classroom? I use both, but for different jobs. I revisited my comparison from last year to look at what has changed, including Canva’s new offline access and Google Slides’ design tools. In the updated post, I share how I choose between them for lesson visuals, clickable sound examples, play-alongs, and those days when the Wi-Fi is unreliable.

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Part 2: Celia & Tito: Turn a Steady Beat Play-Along into a Rhythm-Reading Challenge!

September 20, 2026  /  Amy M. Burns

A couple of weeks ago, I created a steady beat body percussion play-along featuring Celia Cruz and Tito Puente’s recording of “Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In.”

Cruz and Puente recorded their version in 1969, combining two songs from the Broadway musical Hair with the energy and rhythms of Latin music. The recording worked beautifully for steady beat practice—but I knew it could also become an engaging rhythm-reading activity.

So this week, I turned it into a steady beat rhythm play-along!

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Teacher Tip Tuesday: How to Quickly Enhance Your Google Slides

August 29, 2026  /  Amy M. Burns

Sometimes a Google Slides lesson works perfectly—the song, questions, graphics, and learning goals are all there—but the slides themselves could use a little visual enhancement. Rebuilding the entire presentation is probably not how any of us want to spend our planning time or weekends!

For this Teacher Tip Tuesday, I am sharing a quick way to update an existing presentation with Enhance this slide, a Gemini-powered feature built into Google Slides.

In the video, I opened a fall lesson deck that was created for Who Took My Candy Corn? from Music K–8, Vol. 35, No. 1. I already liked what they gave me. However, I wanted to see whether Google Slides could reorganize each slide into a cleaner, more polished layout—without my having to redesign it from scratch.

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Any info, student examples, pictures, graphics, etc, may be used with permission. Please contact me personally before using any info, student examples, pictures, graphics, etc.