This is the second blog in a guest blog series by Amy Burns, the Community Coordinator at Midnight Music, featuring resources from the Ultimate Free Music Tech Resources Guide.
I adore Katie’s Ultimate Free Music Tech Resources Guide 2025-2026, which was just published. Each week, I am highlighting a free tool from each category and how to use it in the classroom. This week, I am showcasing Brisk from the “AI Teacher Productivity Tools” category.
What is Brisk?
From the Brisk website, “Brisk is a Chrome and Edge extension that helps teachers with curriculum, feedback, and differentiation — while giving leaders peace of mind with student-safe AI and real-time visibility into how it’s being used.”
Essentially, it is an AI tool that can help teachers save time. It can:
- Create Content: Easily generate lesson plans, quizzes, Google Docs, Forms, and Slides, all auto-saved directly to your Google Drive. You can create Google Slideshows on the topic you are teaching, telling Brisk the topic, the grade level, whether or not to include images, and how many slides you will need.
- Give Feedback: Provide quick, clear feedback in Google Docs using four different methods.
- Level Resources: Modify reading levels on articles and documents to meet the needs of all students.
- Inspect Writing: Review students’ edits in real time, tracking progress and gaining insights into their work.
- Brisk Boost: Design engaging, AI-powered interactive activities that are safe, aligned with learning objectives, and enhance student engagement.
- It is FERPA, GDPR, and COPPA compliant.
Translate All of Your Google Slideshows/Manipulatives in Seconds
After you install the Chrome extension, you can quickly and easily change your slideshows into over 30 languages so that all of your students can read and learn.
For example:
This slide contains a lot of information about Stevie Wonder for my fourth graders. I want to translate this into Latin American Spanish.
I click the Brisk button (circled in blue above).
Next, I click on Translate.
I click on the grade level, the language, and then tell it to “Brisk it”.
It will show me the file for me to click on to “Brisk it.”
It then copies the file into a new one with all of your slides translated.
Final Tips:
- Check with a teacher who speaks the language to ensure the translations are appropriate for your classroom.
- In Google Docs, translation options are in Brisk’s “Change Levels”.
I hope that this tool will save you some time in your classroom and help all of your students feel included!
About the Author
In 2019, Amy appeared on PBS’s Caucus NJ with Steve Adubato to discuss the importance of music education in early childhood. In 2020, Oxford University Press published her fourth book titled, Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches, a book of lessons that integrates technology into the approaches of Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps in Music, Kodály approach, Orff Schulwerk Approach, and Project-Based Learning. The overviews for each approach were written by Dr. Missy Strong (Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps Approach), Glennis Patterson (Kodály), Ardith Collins (Orff Schulwerk), and Cherie Herring (Project-Based Learning).
Amy has been the MMC Coordinator for five years and has recently expanded her role in elementary music education by becoming the Elementary Consultant for MusicFirst.
To learn more about Amy, visit her website and be sure to follow her on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Want more resources for music tech teachers?
Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my business Midnight Music. Yes – I’m a qualified teacher but I don’t currently teach in a school. I help teachers through the Midnight Music Membership Community– a go-to online hub for tech-focussed professional development.
The Midnight Music Membership Community features:
- step-by-step training
- world-class online courses
- bite-sized learning through digital badges
- creative lesson ideas
It’s designed for teachers of all skill levels – from self-proclaimed ‘technophobes’ to intermediate and advanced tech users. You’ll learn how to integrate technology into your music teaching without the stress, so you can boost classroom outcomes, engage your students on a deeper level, and inspire a lifelong love of music!
If you want simple, effective ideas for using technology in music education, I would LOVE to help you inside the Midnight Music Community.
