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.

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Tech Tip #10: How to use ChatGPT to Save You Time! ⏰

December 23, 2024  /  Amy M. Burns

I used ChaptGPT to save me a great amount of time. One of the ways I used it recently was to write out our holiday concert script. I prompted it and then guided it to:

  • Make it a certain length

  • Change repetitive words

  • Be more specific

  • And that’s just a small amount of what you can do.

The biggest takeaway from this tip is how to prompt. That will save you a lot of time. For example, in your prompts you might need to include:

  • The audience that is reading it

  • The person who might have to recite the script (ie write this script so an 8-year-old can read it with average reading skills)

  • Word count

  • Character limit

  • The person who is writing it (“an elementary music teacher is writing it” or “make it sound like an elementary student is writing it”)

  • Include standards

  • Include composer and arranger

  • And so much more

Here are a few ways you can use ChatGPT to save time:

1. Write emails and letters

2. Generate a random chooser code

3. Create presentations

4. Write social media posts

5. Translate languages

6. Summarize articles

7. Write creative content

8. Answer questions

9. And more!

Come back for #techtip #9 in our countdown to 2025 of #techtips for elementary music teachers!

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