Five Takeaways from the Free NJMEA Monthly Webinars Amy M. Burns

Five Takeaways from the Free NJMEA Monthly Webinars

Amy M. Burns Far Hills Country Day School aburns[at]fhcds.org

Since September of 2021, NJMEA has been offering their current members free monthly webinars. These webinars have featured international presenters, such as Australia’s Midnight Music Founder Katie Wardrobe (https://midnightmusic.com. au/), highly respected presenters from around the country like Music a la Abbott’s Amy Abbott (https://www.musicalaabbott.com/), and our fabulous renowned local presenters such as Creative EDU Consulting’s Shawna Longo (https://www. creativeeduconsulting.com/), ElMusedTech’s Amy M. Burns (http://amymburns.com/), and Zachary Gates, co-author with Shawna of Integrating STEM with Music: Units, Lessons, and Adaptations for K-12 (2021), published by Oxford University Press. These webinars are available for any current NJMEA member for free. You can attend live and ask the presenter questions, or receive the recording afterward to view at your own time and leisure. They are worth one Professional Development (PD) credit hour and to attend live, or receive the recording, you register with the link sent through Tempo Express or found on NJMEA’s Facebook page.

Here are five takeaways from the previous webinars presented earlier this school year.

1. What can Digital Portfolios be used for in a music classroom (from Using Digital Portfolios to Capture Musical Creativity and Learning with Katie Wardrobe)?

Katie presented many ways that digital portfolios can be used in music classes, regardless of the age of the students. They can be used to show the learning process and the progression over time. They can also be used as an assessment tool to show the culmination of a unit taught. In addition, they can be used to showcase students’ musical works, creations, performances, and more. 2. What are some great Digital Portfolio tools?

Digital Portfolios should have artefact formats of adding pictures, text, videos, and audio. They should be shared intuitively to the school (and beyond) and be easy to edit and add items over time. Some options are Wakelet (wakelet.com), website builders like Google Sites (sites.google.com) or Wix (wix.com), Seesaw (app.seesaw.me), Onesite (included in Microsoft Suite), and presentation software like PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Keynote.

3. When using gender neutral terminology for your choir, “trebles” is a good substitute for the sopranos and altos, instead of “girls”. What would be a good substitute for tenors and basses, instead of “boys” (from Gender Neutrality in the Music Room with Amy Abbott)?

Amy Abbott has done extensive research about including gender neutrality in the music classroom. A possible solution to the question posed is that if the traditional sopranos and altos are called “trebles” instead of girls because they are singing in the treble clef, then the traditional tenors and basses could be called “bass voices” since they are singing in the bass clef.

4. What are some ways we can present a concert if we are not able to perform live (from Creating Video Performances with Amy M. Burns)?

The pandemic presented us with challenges on how we could perform when there were limitations from how many could gather in a room to performing socially distanced and wearing masks. This question was first approached in Dr. Missy Strong’s podcast titled, “Music Ed Amplified”,

Season 2 Episode 2, found at https://musicedamplified.blubrry.net/2021/10/13/amy-burns-virtual-performance-helps02e02/. She and I discussed ideas that included creating a virtual sing-along that could be hosted live or asynchronously, using Easy Virtual Choir (https://easyvirtualchoir.com/) to host a virtual choir performance, showcasing live performances using a streaming app such as YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook Live, and using an audio editor to record and mix the audio of the students’ performance. This audio can be added to a video of their performance using a video editor.

5. What is one idea to try with your students in regards to Integrating STEM into the Music Classroom (from STEM with Music with Shawna Longo and Zachary Gates)?

In chapter five of their book, Integrating STEM with Music: Units, Lessons, and Adaptations for K-12, the focus is on STEM lessons for grades K-2. The one that I found very intriguing and could be done in a short amount of time is having students design guitar bodies and perform on them using available technology. This lesson integrates sound, instruments, shapes, engineering, technology, and performance that can be taught in the music classroom, or combined with the classroom and/or science teacher. How can I view previous webinars?

Each webinar was recorded, or pre-recorded, so that those who could not attend the live webinar were able to access the recording afterward. If you would like the recording, please contact me at aburns@fhcds.org. You will need to send me your current NJMEA/NAfME membership number and expiration date so that I can send you the recording and materials that accompanied the recording.

What webinars will be offered in the future?

For the month of March, we will host a live webinar where those who attended the NJMEA Conference can share information from the best sessions that they attended. This webinar will be free to NJMEA members and recorded for those to access at a later date. To join our live webinar, check the NJMEA Facebook group and the Tempo Express to register.

Amy M. Burns has taught elementary general music for over 25 years at Far Hills Country Day School, a preschool through grade eight private school in Far Hills, NJ. She is the Preschool-8 General Music Chair on the NJMEA Board. She has authored four books 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 TI:ME Teacher of the Year, 2016 NJ Master Music Teacher, 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.