My Ninth Blog Post

 I've never really been a fan of online classes, as it's not very engaging for me. Every time I take an online class I think it will be different but it really isn't. I need that in class time to really learn the material. I need to have some structure of having class, having that space to go to, as well as having due dates and someone telling me what to do. Obviously this class doesn't meet in person, but we do have due dates and someone telling us what to do. I think I procrastinate more with online classes, but I do pretty much the same thing with regular classes. And I don't always go to my in person classes unless attendance is mandatory. My issue is that I'm smart enough to get through the class with good grades, but don't have it within me to learn everything on my own. I want to, I keep telling myself I will go back through my classes and read everything in-depth over the break, but I probably won't. I feel like I don't get as much out of the class when it's online, and at the same time I feel like I could've gotten more out of all of my classes. I just don't feel like a good student I guess. It's easier now that I have a job and classes I do have to go to, having an online class in between isn't so bad. But when everything was online my first semester at FSU, it was horrible. I didn't meet anyone, I maybe talked to four people in person total that semester. It was my first semester at FSU, after transferring from another school in the middle of my freshman year. My sleep schedule was insanely bad, I was extremely unmotivated and depressed. My first semester of college was mostly online too, and so was the end of high school. So it's been difficult being pulled out of the automatic going to school everyday and never missing anything, to being at home and trying to find the motivation to do work for class, and then going off to college and not having any structure, and now years later I'm still trying to find it within me to get out of bed in the morning. I ask myself what's wrong with me and why I keep doing this, maybe a little bit of it is the after math of covid. But also I don't want to get out of bed. It's a never-ending struggle.

Open Education Resources are resources that are free to use for teachers, in ways specified by the creator under their copyright license. There are 5 R's that describe the ways these resources can be and manipulated: retain (keeping copies), reuse (use in a teaching setting), revise (word the content), remix (add content to it), and redistribute (share copies with others). One website I found for music ed resources features links to free books, lesson plans, courses, and other things, as well as the same for other subjects. The website even has information about Creative Commons Licenses, as well as their own at the bottom of the page, which says I can share and adapt their content with proper attribution.

https://oer.bmcc.cuny.edu/academic-subjects/music/ 

I have not started working on the next presentation assignment, because of course I haven't, however I did do the first one. It took me longer than I thought it would, and once I started working on it I got overzealous and had to cut back on all the things I wanted to put in the presentation. I realized that presentations could potentially be a great way to help facilitate learning in the music classroom as I was making the presentation. I think it could be great for writing group warm-ups or sight reading, and putting it on the board each day. Presentations in the band classroom are rare, so it could be a good way to get some different engagement with the students. It could also be a good way to have my own information that I need to share on something they can look at and is organized, rather than me spewing important information at them and hoping they are still paying attention and remembering what I'm saying. I like the audio feature as well, it could be a good way to supplement learning and for students to go back and listen to what I said if I record it in advance.