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!
March Music Madness with a creative focus using Chrome Music Lab Song Maker. Read through the post or watch the YouTube video to see how to use or adapt this for an elementary music class across grade levels. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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Need a fun Valentine Medley Rhythm Play-Along with the teaching manipulatives? Check this out! If you enjoy my resources, please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
Read More#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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Have you ever needed free notation graphics that you could easily grab and use at a moment’s notice? Or have access to them to create manipulatives, presentations, worksheets, posters, and more? Look no further than Katie Wardrobe’s Midnight Music’s Big Free Music Notation Library COMPLETE 2022! Check out the webisode and blog about this great resource. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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Many of my favorite music educators from Katie Wardrobe to Jim Frankel have spoken highly of the free website, Vocal Remover (https://vocalremover.org/) created by Melnik Dmitry. This site can do so many things that you need for your music classroom, and it can do it for free on various devices because it is web-based. You are not required to login to use this, but if you become a patron, you will be able to use the website often. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech.
Read more to find out how to remove vocals, split accompaniment tracks into separate, instrumental tracks, and so much more!
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#8 Creatability from Google Experiments. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
From the website: “Creatability is a set of experiments made in collaboration with creators and allies in the accessibility community. They explore how creative tools – drawing, music, and more – can be made more accessible using web and AI technology. They’re just a start. We’re sharing open-source code and tutorials for others to make their own projects.”
Use these three I show in the webisode to visualize pitch and dynamics and to give the opportunity for all of your students to make and create music.
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For the past few years, I have counted down to the new year with a top ten list. I begin on 12/23 and end on 1/1. The list is comprised of 10 tech tools or tips for elementary and middle school general music. This top ten list will have a tech tool or tip featured each day in a short video and blog post. When we reach number one, I will follow it with a video of all ten tools and tips. Therefore, you can follow me daily, or come back on New Year’s Day and catch all ten at once.
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Like my resources? Please buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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Countdown to 2023-10 Tech Tools or Tips for Elementary and Middle School General Music: #10 Two Important YouTube Tips
For the past few years, I have counted down to the new year with a top ten list. I begin on 12/23 and end on 1/1. The list is comprised of 10 tech tools or tips for elementary and middle school general music. This top ten list will have a tech tool or tip featured each day in a short video and blog post. When we reach number one, I will follow it with a video of all ten tools and tips. Therefore, you can follow me daily, or come back on New Year’s Day and catch all ten at once.
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Read MoreIt’s beginning to look a lot like…
That time of year when we are about to approach a holiday break and we need activities to quickly and intuitively use in a class of elementary music students. There have been so many wonderful contributions from numerous elementary music educators that I wanted to make this Wakelet so these activities were all in one place.
Check out over 170 music activities to celebrate the winter or December holidays in those last few days before the holiday break! Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech.
Read MoreLast year, I created a mashup of popular holiday songs from holidays celebrated in the States during the month of December. This year, I include slides for you to teach the rhythm patterns and musical elements that are found in the play-along. Read for more and if you like my resources, please consider buying me a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
Read MoreNeed musical activities for early childhood and elementary classes for this shortened week? Take a look at the Being Thankful/Giving Thanks/Thanksgiving Music Activities Wakelet (https://wakelet.com/wake/zeVd8qvk_TuEbRCXzbL4I) and read the blog to see some of the highlights from the Wakelet!
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What happens when you can use Zoomerang to create quick boomwhacker snippets? Currently, a work-in-progress, hopefully by the end of the week, I will find out!
Read MoreNeed an elementary fall-themed video for preschool through grades 4? Or a Halloween-themed video? Rhythm Play-along? Boomwhacker? Song? Games? Look no further! Here is a Wakelet, along with a YouTube webisode and blog to give examples of how they can be used in the classroom this season!
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It is the start of a new school year here in NJ and I am looking at a song that will describe the feeling of starting a school year with a more normal feel. I chose the Lego Movie’s Everything is AWESOME by Tagan and Sara featuring The Lonely Island. Here is a rhythm play-along to the song.
Read MoreThis is the fifth installment of my summer project of creating play-along videos of songs and concepts found in the Kodály and Orff Schulwerk approaches. This week, I feature We Are Dancing In The Forest Play-Along (Boomwhackers, Percussion, and Recorder) video.
Each video (found on my YouTube page) will be accompanied by lesson manipulatives. The lesson manipulatives can be found on my Teachers Pay Teachers page starting in September (these free manipulatives are now showing up on my TPT page). Up until then, you can have them for free (as seen below and beginning to show up on my TPT page). This gives you the opportunity to use the video for free to work well with your classroom approach or purchase the lesson that goes along with the video on my TPT page. Either way, the videos are free to use in your classroom.
Google slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fHjgrbaRpyIiBY6aLjXf0XuRk8G-96EGEj94rr9w2_w/copy
PDF File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10_7A9PKoapFKYa7ZvIojoJ55OizNpaY9/view?usp=sharing
Seesaw Activity: https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_activity?prompt_id=prompt.49b4ebe7-65bd-48d8-802f-a95ce1a54873&share_token=DmycA2--QjqHlOUx6gERkw
YouTube Play-Along Video: https://youtu.be/hCwj2SRlunY
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This week's installment is a Tech Tip featuring Book Creator (https://bookcreator.com/)! Like my videos and resources? I am proud to say that I am a Book Creator Ambassador as I believe in this product and the way it helps my #elmused students' creativity and confidence. Learn more in this video and check out this blog post with examples.
Read MoreI created this Wakelet to assist music educators at this time of year with finding graduation songs that fit their preschoolers, kindergartners, higher elementary grades, and middle schoolers. The Wakelet is divided into four categories:
Preschool/Kindergarten Songs
Higher Elementary
Middle School
Articles about Graduation Song Choices
Below, I highlight songs from each category and how I used them with my students.
Read MoreThis video is for birthday celebrations if you can celebrate them in your music classroom. This video will cover all of your students' birthdays throughout the school year. Like my videos? Please consider buying me a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech The musical concepts covered are 3-meter, 4-meter, accents, quarter, half, dotted half, whole, and eighth notes, along with triplets.
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I created this Wakelet that includes multiple activities to use in your elementary music classes on Valentine’s Day. It is labeled in five categories:
Rhythm play-along videos
Boomwhacker videos
Valentine games
Play-Along Videos with body percussion of iconic notation
Lessons
Enjoy! And Happy Valentine’s Day!
I created this play-along because my students know the song well. The Lǎoshī (老师) that worked at our school taught the students this song and they loved it so much that we sing it every year.
This play-along is played twice. The first time is a slow tempo to practice and the second time is the recorded tempo. I used Flat.io to create the notation to help with playing the song.
If you do not know the song, this will be complicated to play and take some time and practice to learn. But, if you do know the song, it should work well.
