Memorizing, Memorized, Memorize

We all know what memorization is and just how hard it is to actually accomplish it. However, we also know that memorization is, without a doubt, the most vital step when it comes to learning or studying for an exam. I still remember how much memorization I had to go through when the time came for me to take SAT. I used flash cards back then to memorize the vocabularies that I didn't know. There wasn't really any strategy I was familiar with back then for memorization, so I just read and wrote the word until I memorized it (which took tons and tons of my time!!). Luckily, no more of such roughness need to exist in my college life since I learned a useful memorization strategy.

The strategy I used is called Link System Strategy and it was nearly a perfect strategy for classes such as CFS388 which consisted of solely vocabularies and names. The class was designed for pure memorization. I figured that it was much easier to use the link system strategy to memorize rather than just doing the old classic style of reading and writing. Most of the terms in CFS388 are words that I've never heard which will give me some trouble when it comes to memorizing them. The perfect solution for that is Link System Strategy. This strategy helps you to memorize the words by coming up with an image or sound that resembles the word. This may depend on person by person, but you will eventually come up with something rather 'absurd' to relate to the word and memorize them by thinking that 'absurd thing' when you see your term.

Using the strategy is overall easy, especially for those who have strong imagination. For CFS 388, I tried Link System Strategy on couple of terms that I need to memorize for next upcoming exam.

For the first term G-Spot (which is the vital spot for female), I thought of hot spot (a type of volcanoe) which I learned last semester in Earth Science. And came of with an absurd event which a hot spot in Hawaii erupted, but hot spots rarely erupt so it is an absurd event. For Masters and Johnsons which are the names of researchers I need to memorize, I used the word Masturbation because they discovered something related to that in their research. Lastly, for the word Aprodisiac which is a drug that enhances sexual experience, I easily came of with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, which the term Aprodisiac is actually originated from. Using the Link System Strategy makes memorization not only easier, but last in your memory much longer.

My Memories.....

Yes, I am a first-year college student, and not a floppy disk and therefore, I cannot memorize every single letters and words into my regular sized brain. Memorizing is a hard, very challenging task, and it is also the most important part of studying for exams. There are a lot of other factors in studying, such as reading, citing, understanding, comprehending and such, but in the end, if you do not have a single thing in your head, you will not pass the exams. Thus, memorizing is a burdensome part of work.

Of course, it is impossible to memorize a whole book. But when it comes to memorizing concepts, vocabulary and definitions, there definitely are the right ways for me to memorize. The two best ways that help me most in memorizing are using flashcards, and Link System Strategy.

I used flashcards in my PSY 205 class. I did not use it for memorizing vocabularies, since I will be using more than 100 flashcards for the 4 chapters that I am studying for, and I know I do not need to memorize these vocabularies with flashcards. There is no need. What I used it on was knowing each of the concepts and relating them with each other. If I have flashcards, it is easier to flash them at myself anytime anywehre, and it helps me absorb the materials more quickly because I can repeatedly do it in order to memorize.

I used Linking System Strategy in PSY 205 as well. I like to LINK my concepts into something more interesting in order to get myself familiar with the unfamiliar concepts. I also included related definitions since that is what is important in memorizing these concepts. I love how these systems work because they are amusing to use and at the same time they help me learn the actual materials as well. These are the kind of topics that I would not use flashcards for. Therefore, this LINK strategy works in heaps of way for me. They make the topic more interesting and let me relate to them in all ways.

I learned that learning and actually memorizing the materials in your head is all about repeating and repeating. Whether it is reading, or just memorizing definitions of vocabularies, repeating is the first thing in memorizing something. However, I found that I am not too efficient in writing down things to memorize. So I rather use these kinds of visuals that can relate me to the topics. Whatever strategy is there to use, repetition and practicing is the key points in remembering them most. Now, LET's MEMORIZE.

Rehearse it!

Out of all the memory strategies that we've learned in class, i've figured that rehearse strategy is the best strategy that works for me. Since I am a pre-med student, I take courses such as chemistry and biology; courses that require great amount of memorization. Thus, I chose to memorize concepts, equations, and definitions by rehearsing method. For Biology, I wrote a definition over and over again until I have memorized it for sure. By writing in the notebook with hand, I was able to re-read the definition over and over, thus, able to understand the material better.

For chemistry, there are lots of equations and concepts to not only memorize, but understand as well. As I was re-writing the material over and over again, I was able to understand the material throughout the process of repeating writing. I really had trouble with memorizing the units in chemistry, involving power exponents with giga, mega, kilo, deci, centi, milli, micro, nano, pico and femto. However, when I repeated writing for second and third time, I have fully memorized all the units.

Overall, the rehearsing strategy really worked great for both of my courses. I hope that it works for everyone and I'm planning to keep using it

Memory

Personally, I have some difficulties in memorizing things. I frequently have trouble memorizing stuffs, and I also forget things easily. When I said I forget things easily, it does not mean that I easily lose my personal belongings or stuffs like that, such as key or cellphone; it means that I have trouble memorizing informations or vocabularies that I have learned during class. No matter how hard I try, I sometimes find it challenging to memorize things. And, the funny thing is, I forget the the informations that I memorized so hard so easily. Usually, I would forget everything that I have learned after a test or an exam is over. I knew that I have to do something in order to improve my memorization skill; that is why I have used several memory strategies. Out of all the memory strategies, I found that 'rehearse' is the best strategy for me, which is basically writing down the information over and over again by hand. Since I am taking a language course (Japanese 102), I think it will be a good idea to use the memory strategy to this class. Also, my Astronomy class is a class that requires lots of memorization along with understanding, so I applied the memory strategy to my Astronomy class.

In Japanese class, the main thing that we are learning about is family, and the vocabularies that we are learning are the family terms in Japanese. For this class, I rehearsed the information by making several family trees. I made several family trees over and over again. The picture in the left shows 2 family trees that I made in Japanese. The terms that I wrote were grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, dad, mom, older brother, older sister, younger brother, younger sister. By writing it down several times and looking at it visually, it was a lot easier to memorize the terms. As you can see in the picture, I have made the family trees different from each other. It was to prevent me from memorizing by only one way.

For my Astronomy class, we are learning about the afterlife of the stars. Like when humans die, stars leave their 'decoys' in space. The three 'decoys' are the white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. These are the main terms that we have know for this chapter, so I picked out these three terms, and rehearsed them. The method I did for this class is a bit different with Japanese's one. I rehearsed the terms by writing the terms and then write the definition of each terms. For example, I would write down 'white dwarf,' and will write the definition of the white dwarf next to it. For each term, I did it 5 times which was just right to memorize the term with the definition. Also, while I was writing the terms and the definitions down, I read it outloud. This way, I was able to insert the information to my head faster and easier.

Rehearse was the most suitable strategy for me to memorize the materials and information that I have learned during class. I keep on writing the vocabularies, terms, and the definitions down over and over. I was able to memorize them soon, and, the most good news is, I was able to remember them for a quite a long time. Comparing to the method I used before, rehearsing the materials really helped me a lot.

iMemorize

One of the most difficult and yet important aspect in your college learning is about changing and trying different strategy on your old studying habit. It's well known fact that strategy you have used in high school isn't as effective as it was in... well in high school. You need to find new and better strategy that's proven to work to succeed in college. This can be applied to reading, memorizing, and preparing for an exam. In this blog, I have adapted and applied some of the memorization strategy to my courses. I've used Link System strategy on NSD 225 class. This course is heavy on reading and memorizing information so it's perfect course to try out this new strategy on memorization.

Nutrition class is all about reading and memorizing different types of vitamins, nutritions, and health related side effects. These elements are often all linked together so you can't just memorize this one thing and move on to the other. You need to know which elements is in which vitamin to understand the other vitamin. Link System helps you to memorize terms and concepts with images that looks alike and sounds alike. Basically, to really utilize this strategy, you need to invest and really think about the related images and sounds similar to the terms you want to remember. It might be little more time consuming than just reading the terms over and over, but once you follow the strategy and really understand the concept of it, it will stick in your head much longer.

To use this strategy, you need to first figure out which terms or concepts you want to use this for. Then, create a image or words that can be easily related to the words you are trying to memorize. For example, to memorize calcium, I related it to the abstract image of milk and related milk to bones. Because milk promotes absorption of calcium and this leads to stronger bones density, I can memorize calcium much easier and retrieve it later without a problem. Another example would be trying to memorizing sodium and relate that to the salt. Salt would be related to table salt in Burger King. Visualizing abstract images and relating those elements with familiar places and objects, it helped me to memorize things better than just memorizing them with definition.

Link System Sample Application

After using this strategy, I felt really familiar with the whole strategy. Visualizing and using images and places to memorize things is popular and exercised by people in many different areas. But, by learning and seeing it in action, especially for my school courses, it looks different and worth the time to invest and really explore more to adapt into my current studying habit. Out of all other strategies on memorization, Link System works best for me and I plan on trying this strategy for my other courses as well. But for now, it works perfect with NSD 225 and I can't wait to test this strategy out on my Exam 3.

Maybe not but you get the idea.

Memorize, Memorize, and Memorize!

Now that the spring break is over, we all are back to the routines of reading, writing, and, most importantly, memorizing. Memorizing is really important when we study for the exams, especially when the tests are focused mostly on facts and definitions.

When it comes to memorizing, I have been practicing it ever since I was in middle school so I did not have much trouble memorizing certain definitions. In fact, I think I tend to memorize pretty quickly because I've been memorizing things the way that worked for me for a long time.

The best way for me, personally, is the flash cards. This is because I am a visual and kinesthetic learner. Although this strategy is not mentioned in the "Memory lecture" for CLS class, I use this the most effectively and I want to share this as part of this week's blog. The good thing about flash card is that not only I visually memorize by going over them multiple times, but I also memorize by writing the definitions on the flash cards before I start looking through them. The class I mostly use this strategy is the Art History 106. The flash cards work the best for this class for I have to memorize a lot of paintings at once; because I have to memorize paintings, I need to look at them over and over to memorize them.

As mentioned before from the previous blog, the flash cards are well provided by the professor. With these provided flash cards, I put more informations that I think are important to know on the right side.

After I have all the imformation written down, I cut out each sections and fold by half to have painting on one side and the information on the other. After this I just carry them around with me and look at them over and over wherever I go.

This not only saves time in studying for the upcoming lecture, but also makes me be prepared way before I sit down and actually start studying for the test. Although many of us know how the flash card strategy works and I am sure many of us use this for their study aid. But because I use this strategy the most when I memorize, I had to share the effectiveness I get from this.

Antoher great strategy that I actually learned from the CLS class is the Acronym sentence, or acrostic. This strategy makes us to create a sentence from the first letters of each item that I want to remember. Whether it is for science or history course, if we need to memorize the terms or words in order, we can arrange those words in order and create a sentence or phrase with the first letters of each.

For my Astronomy 104 class, I was able to use this strategy very effectively. The materials we learn in astronomy class these days is the H-R diagram, or the Hertzsprung - Russell Diagram, which plots the luminosity as a function of temperature for stars. It's usefullness comes from how it illustrates stellar evolution of many different types of stars in one glance. This is where I used the acronym sentence to memorize the information of the diagram.

The bottom of the diagram is the temperature going from hot on the left to cold on the right. At this scale, there is 7 sections divided by colors according to the temperature and each color has the letters to indicate its identification. We needed to know these letters in order from O to M in order to remeber the color and the temperature corresponding with it.

Here is what I did to memorize this. The letters are arranged in the order of O, B, A, F, G, K, and M, where O is the hottest and M the coolest. Realizing that making a phrasewith these letters would help me better in memorizing them, I created a phrase Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me. This helped me memorize the letters and order of them much better; by repeating the phrase over and over again, the letters and order was eventually stuck in my head that I could not ever forget anymore.

When studying for the exams, you will need to do a lot of memorizing. And it is imporatant how you memorize the materials that could help you remember them quicker and longer. To me, flash cards and acronym sentences were the perfect way!

TART, Where the Real Reading Takes Place

When I was reading over the CLS 105 textbook for reading strategies, TART strategy just popped into my eyes. I was fortunate enough the find this strategy, since it just matches the way I like to study for my classes. Reading is a hell of a job for me, especially in classes with huge textbooks, I never expected myself to be reading all those chapters out. I have been struggling and somehow going through my chapters until now. But when I found TART and used this strategy for my PSY 205 and NSD 225, I knew that this was a perfect strategy for me to use every time.

First comes the Terms. The very one thing that I like about my textbook is that all the terms are listed at the end of each chapters. There are not only the key terms, but also the key concepts and the summary of everything that you will be reading throughout the chapter. I usually struggle to read the materials before lectures. But when I skimmed over the chapters and looked over the terms and the summary, I was able to understand and comprehend the lectures more precisely.

Second, I Attend.

There comes the notes and the important concepts that I earned from the lectures. Whatever I need, I write them down, then I look over them on the following day, along with reading my textbook. When I go to class, I am actually more inclined to listen to the lecture, since I have prepared myself with the material in a level before attending the lecture. So I am able to absorb information more quickly and thoroughly. Thirdly, reading the actual textbook. I love how I have already skimmed through the materials and am familiar with the vocabulary and the concepts in a way when I read. I can familiarize myself with the readings and it helps me go over them more quickly than when I usually read. Read, read, Read on, and then read more.

Lastly, the Test Questions, which I am already familiar with. I know how helpful this part of the strategy is, and I am glad that now I can utilize this in TART. While I am reading, I go over something important or a detail that I should remember. Then I like to make them into a question so that I can always look over them and answer them, which makes me not forget the information too easily. I will keep utilizing this strategy as the semaster goes on, and see how well it will work. It seems to work out greatly for now, as far as managing my time, and chunking my tasks in groups. I hope this can benefit me in my reading and learning the materials, and help me improve in my reading skills for all my classes.

Readers are the Leaders

I hope everyone had or is still having an awesome spring break. I am still in NYC, but I didn't forget about our blog assignment.

Reading is never fun, at least for me. Staring at that black and white substance can be more painful than anything, especially in college where those substances amount to 3 digit number of pages. But, you have to admit that without consistent reading, you won't be very happy with your test results. Even knowing this fact, I sometimes fail to finish the reading assignment due to its enormous length.

College courses are much different from than that of high school. Some courses are held only once a week and that can leave the professor with only one choice: reading assignment. To be successful in these kind of courses, you not only have to attend the course but also be on a good pace with the reading assignments. For example, my CFS388 course is a course held once a week. You miss the course for that week, you are doomed, but if you fail to complete the reading assignment as well, it will result in a devastation, because you just lost 7% of what the course will cover. To prevent this problem, I decided to input one of CLS reading strategy: TART (Term, Attend, Read and Test)

TART strategy is actually quite similar to what I've been doing so far. The first part of the strategy: term is where you preview the material before the lecture. What I originally did was a general preview of the lecture that would be held in the future, but what CLS strategy here concentrated on were terms. You will find the chapters of the future lecture and find the glossary section of it and preview the terms that might have a good chance of being mentioned by the professor in lecture.

The second part, of course, is to attend the lecture and attempt to find the terms that are actually being mentioned. I think this part is the most important, because if you are able to find the terms that both you thought it would come out and it does come out, it is more than likely going to be on an exam. The third part is to read the lecture notes before going on to the painful reading assignment. Reading lecture notes first is much more effective because this could narrow down the reading assignments into half of its size. After I finish reading the lecture notes, I pick out the important parts in the reading assignments and read them. And now, I would finally get to the final step: TEST.

The two courses that I chose to use this strategy were CFS388 and ECN203. Both courses handle terms and definitions as the main part of the exam. And these two courses have the most complicated terms out of all the course I am taking right now. The TART strategy cannot be any better for these kind of courses.

Joy of Baking TART!!

Chemistry Note: Before & After the lecture

Left side of the note are the two possible exam questions, and

the right page indicates how I solved the two questions.

Biology definitions & concepts, followed by 2 possible exam questions

Before I went off for Spring Break to NYC, I applied TART strategy to two of my courses: Biology and Chemistry. Before Biology and Chemistry, I have 1 hour break for myself to catch up on materials. During this break, I skimmed through the materials that I was going to learn in lecture beforehand, and wrote all the definitions and concepts down on my notes. I organized the notes so that it can be easily followed during lecture and left bit of space for each concept to write down additional information that the professor was going to explain in more details.

In biology, we covered study of tissues: nervous, muscle, epithelial, and connective. During this lecture, I wrote down detailed information based on professor's knowledge, and had a handful information on epithelial and its branch information of squamous cells. I have actually attended and participated and took action. In chemistry, we were learning information on ICE tables and it was something that I learned in high school. Apparently, I had a slight memory of the material, so I took it for granted and went to the lecture with attitude of reviewing and learning the material again. I had to find the equillibrium molarity based on initial molarity given in the question, and had to use the ICE table to solve for it. Two pictures attached above will help you readers to understand what I am talking about.

After the lecture, I went back to my room to review the materials that were covered on that day and made up some questions for myself. I looked at previous exams to see the kinds of questions that professor usually asks on exam and used the same format to create my own questions. Even though I made up the question by myself, solving and coming up with the answer was actually hard for chemistry as it involved calculations and solving using ICE tables which sometimes get really confusing. Then I thought to myself. If I accumulate more and more questions, I will have many possible exam questions before the actual exam takes place. Therefore, this strategy really works as it forces me to review the materials beforehand and create possible exam questions which allow me to test my knowledge based on the material covered on that day.

iReading

We can all agree that reading in college is no fun. It's not like the reading you do on your free time or for entertainment. This makes reading painful. However, it's also the one of the most important segment of your courses. Most of courses are structured and designed based on the reading materials, understand them and then the application. Most professors assign reading materials more than they should, hoping students to read them all and understand them fully by next lecture. Some students actually do read them all for fun but most of us are just hopeless for the enormous amount of reading we have to do. This is why we have to make a strategic decisions about what we read and how to read it so we have enough time left to actually understanding them. To achieve this goal, I chose TART strategy and applied it to my NSD 225 & CFS 388 courses.

This strategy is particularly good for courses that are lecture dependent. The focus of this strategy is to utilize lecture as a preview for the reading and creating test questions as a review to prepare for the exam. To use this strategy, I read the important terms in bold print for the chapter responsible for the next lecture. Then I created a list of those terms with definitions that I expect my professor would focus on. With the important terms written down and getting familiar with them, I attended lecture and understood what professor was talking about more easily. After the lecture, I read the chapter for review and to clarify anything that I did not understand. I also created a test questions that I think my professor would ask for the exam and also answered them. This strategy helped me to prepare for exam and understand materials much easier. Because I knew the terms and concepts before the lecture, it was so much easier and clarifying to hear professor explaining them for the second time rather than trying to absorb them while listening for the first time. Because both NSD and CFS courses are lecture dependent and require us to read a lot from both textbooks and lecture notes, TART strategy worked very well. It also helped me to prepare for the exam and made reading much easier.

CFS 388 TART Notes

NSD 225 TART Notes

Reading the textbook

I did not really had any choice on deciding which class that I should use the reading strategies, because out of my 5 classes, there is only one class that I really use the textbook beneficially: my Astronomy class. Most of my other classes depends on the lectures and the notes during the class. Also, my astronomy textbook has a lot of information that can help me studying for the exam that is coming up soon. Anyhow, I chose my Astronomy class for the two reading strategies that I had in mind.

The two strategies that I chose are the 'X Minute Reading' and the 'TART' strategy. Instead of using the strategies the way they are explained in the book, I sort of change the strategies and combined those two strategies.

Before the lecture began, I first read the material in the textbook to get familiar with it. I just skimmed throught the textbook that I was going to learn during the lecture, so I can get familiar with the material. I paid more attention at the end of the chapter, where the textbook summaries and describes the key concepts and the terms of the materials (This part goes to the TART strategy). After I read the terms and got familiar with the concepts, I attend my lecture, and took notes that the professor showed during the class. It was a bit easier for me to understand the materials because I read it before class. After the lecture, I opened my textbook to read it again, but this time I timed myself in reading the text (both TART strategy and X Minute Reading strategy). The textbook's material was divided into several sections, so I gave myself about 5 to 10 minutes for each sections. After I read all of the materials in the textbook, it was time for me to summarize the materials and create a study aid (The second picture is part of my study aid). When I usually make a study aid, I have my own style of making a study aid, and I prefered using my own study aid style, because I have been using it for a long time. After I made the study aid, I reviewed the study aid over and over again until I thought it will be enough. The last step of the this two-combined strategy was creating the test questions. Using the note from the lecture and the textbook, I made several questions in multiple choices and labeled the answers on the bottom of the last page of the question sheet.

Though I did not follow exactly as the book told me to do, I think the strategy helped me a lot. I thought that both of strategy will work out good when they were combined to each other, and it actually worked out really good. It helped me understand the materials. I also think that I was able to save some time because I combined the two strategies. It was like catching two birds with one stone: use two strategies effectively at once, and save time!

Do You Know TART?

First of all, how was your Spring Break everyone? I hope you all had fun in any places you went. I was in NYC for the break and I gotta admit, I've had too much of the fun there!

Hope you all had too! But I also hope that you guys did not forget about the Blog update for the upcoming Monday!

Just so you guys might be confused in what the topic is, for this week we have to share our reading strategy.

There are many reading strategies that we've learned from the CLS class and among those many, I decided to use TART for my strategy for many of my classes are lecture dependant.

So, for the last week, before spring break, I decided to use TART on two of my courses, Astronomy 104 and Art History 106.

First, to explain what TART is about, it stands for Terms, Attend, Read, and Test. The Terms part is where I begin my work: before going to the lecture, I need to open my text book and find the chapters I need to read for the upcoming lecture. Then I go to the glossary section - which is usually on the end of the chapters - and read the terms and definitions and then create the abbreviations for the terms I anticipate to hear in the lecture. And then I Attend the lecture and try to recognize the terms I've previously anticipated. And after that, I would reread the lecture notes before I Read the text books. I would read the textbooks the get more familiarized with the lecture. And while I read the text books, I could write questions down to Test myself later while studying for the exam.

This seemed the best for my two subjects: Astronomy and Art History for I actually did read the text after the lecture. However, realizing that skimming through the text and recognizing the terminologies previously, I learned that the lectures would be more easy to understand.

The first picture is the page of the glossary for my Astronomy textbook and thankfully for Art History, which is the second picture, my professor posted the terms on blackboard for me to bring it with me for the luctures.

With the two terms familiarized, I learned how I was actually able to listen to and understand the lectures better. This was the Terms and Attend part of my strategy. After the lecture, with well taken notes, I reread them right after class and then at that night, when I was doing my homework. I did not have to carefully Read the given chapters of the textbook. Instead, I speed - read the chapters and I was actually able to understand the materials much quicker and better.

After I finished reading the textbooks, I created the test questions I anticipated in the upcoming test and tried to answer them with going over the textbooks and notes. I have been doing Test questions and I already know how effective it is to my study strategy. This continues to give myself to review the materials, which will shorten my study hours before the tests: with shorter study hours, I can rest more to be well functioned on the test day.

What I realized from this reading strategy was that this could be the strategy in which all different types of strategies we've learned are included. From test prep to note taking, this strategy requires us to do everything for our course which will be a very helpful way for us to prepare for the test in more than one way. I really think TART is a very effective strategy and I recommend you all to give it a try!

Now that we've enjoyed and rested well enough from the Spring Break, let us all get back to our race and finish the rest of the semester in success!! Let's go agents! :D

SU/CORNELL vs. 1 PLUS 3

First of all, I like to reinforce how important note taking is. It is a major part of keeping a good study habit. Note taking, which is usually done during lectures/class period or time of studying, is the process of filling up those blank pages into something that can connect with you and your intellectual. I learned that notes are not just bullet point, incomplete sentences. They are whatever you can do in order to help you understand and absorb the materials.

SU/Cornell note taking strategy attracted my eyes. It was the process of completing the day's or the certain chapter's notes. The notes I took in PSY 205 were very simple. I thought it would help to be simple but when I looked over them again after the class, I thought there were just too many details missing. They all stated the main points and topics clearly and usually I tend to study the details through reading through my books again. However, there were important things that I should always keep in my mind along with these main topics that were missing in the notes. As I skimmed through the chapter, I saw a lot of information that could be added, and that is why I chose to use this method. I had the freedom of filling the corresponding information in the margin. Then on the very top, I had to make another box for summarizing my notes. For the summay part, I did not actually summarize them into a "paragraph" form. As you can see, it is not too wordy, as I do not like to get wordy when looking over them again. What I did was I made arrows for the topics and concepts that are interrelated with each other. If I was to write a summary in a paragraph, I would, but this PSY 205 notes was not the right type of notes to write a bunch of sentences with. This helped me into understanding and having a stronger grasp on the chapter because I usually do not take notes by myself. But when I actually tried and did write them out, it helped me learn and memorize them fully. I liked how I chose not to write too much because then it would only take more of my time away. The side notes really helped me in remembering the key points and understanding them.

I have utilized the 1 PLUS 3 note taking strategy into my HTW 221 course. In this course, and in this particular chapter, there was a lot of information to be covered and learned. So the notes became kind of wordy. I put the SU/Cornell Strategy into effect for the notes I wrote on the first page. On the margins, I wrote details that should be remembered along with the concepts. This tactic of adding into your notes really help me in a lot of ways. I do not need to read every word by word, I could just skim through the margins and see what is included in the notes and what is important, the key concepts.

On the opposite side of the notes, I made the actual 1 PLUS 3 NOTES. Part A consists of concepts of the topics of the notes, Part B is the graphic organizer, and Part C is the questions that I made myself. This strategy is really helpful because all 3 of them are included in one page, and I can go back and each every one of them, and see how all the concepts are interrelated. It may take up a lot of worktime, but during the time when I was writing them out and forming them, it was the actual study time for me. I learned during the process of filling up this page. This helps me greatly because I can learn my topics from 3 DIFFERENT categories, which seems very fine for the visual learners. The questions I make, and the outline of the topics on Part A just sorts out perfectly!

Plug That A+ In!!

I hope everyone did or is doing well during this mid-term week before spring break. I had taken one test which would count as 40 % of my final grade (Yes, it is big). I had CFS 388 (Human Sexuality) exam on Wednesday. The exam was introduced rather vaguely. The professor has told us that it would be comprised of 50% lecture and 50% text materials. I had the book and he provided informations on which sections to study for, so for the first 50%, I wasn't worried. However, the other 50% which was to be solely on lectures whether it was on the lecture board or from the Professor's mouth, its area was quite huge. Luckily, I had many strategies available to me to prepare for this exam. The method I chose was Plug-In. There couldn't have been any better method for an exam like this one. I just needed to concentrate on the 50% of the exam that were from the lectures as I had other 50% of the material already covered with information from the Professor and the text.

The Plug-In strategy was rather straight-forward. It was similar to the strategy I had used for exams long before I had taken CLS105. I had lots of notes prepared that covered all the lectures from CFS388. Now, I just had to create the questions that would be exam-friendly. The exam was to have 50 questions. So I had frequently used this strategy until I would be near that number. I also knew that there would be lots of True or False questions on the test. So, I had used the second half of the questions to be in a manner of true or false.

How about 1 + 3 Method for You?

What is the most effective way to take notes in my classes? That is the question that I've always been asking myself. As I go to each lecture from different classes, I find that the note taking skills all differ depending on the type of your course.

In science or math related classes, where most of the materials are informations and definitions, I find it helpful to just write everything down shown by the professor on the screen front of us. Since the definitions are the most important in such classes, I would just write them all down and review them as soon as I go back to my room after the lecture.

However, when I am in language arts related classes, such as history or english, in which a lot of interpretting, analyzing, and writing is required, it is not such a good idea to write down what's on the overhead, especially if the professors post the lecture notes after each class. Also, because what professors put up in their slides in such classes are summarized, concise words, if I just put them down, when I look back into my notes, I hardly remember what thoes notes were talking about. So, in such classes, I usually focused more on writing what professors say during the lecture.

However, because the professors would not stop talking just so that I can finish writing everything they say, it was hard for me to write all of the information, sometimes just writing only half of them. I needed to quickly summarize what they say and write concise notes in order to get everything down on my notebook.

However, for both types of classes, I thought I could find a better way to take effective notes. And as I learned from the CLS class, the 1 + 3 notes seemed to be the best strategy to use during any types of classes.

You might have to tilt your head to see it clearly

For my AST 104 class, I used this strategy. I wrote the lecture notes on the left side, and on the right side, on the 1+3 section, I put down the terms on the left side, with definitions and examples on the right side. At the end of the class, as I went over the notes, I thought up of the questions and wrote them down on the bottom section.

The good thing about this method is that I can use it on the language arts classes as well. For history class, I can take what professor says on the left side. And on the right side, I could put down the history terminologies on the left side of the 1 + 3 method column, examples and notes on the slide on the right side. With all these notes combined, I could think up of questions on my own and, just as I did for Astronomy class, I could put down the questions on the bottom.

I think I was able to write down more information with this method, more effectively and efficiently. For my next History class I will try to use this method and see if it actually works well in such courses as well. Try it for yourself because it really helps!

Just Plug-It In!!!

For this week's TECH assignment, I have used the Plug-in Notes. I have applied this strategy in CHE116 class. The note itself was taken on Wednesday, which means that it was the day before the chemistry exam that took place on Thursday afternoon. The notes that I have written down during the lecture was on materials that professor said out loud and it was the materials that weren't covered on the powerpoint slides. At the end, I went back to my notes, and I approximately have written the materials down that was equivalent to about 1 page length. I didn't have any format for my notes as I was rushing to write the information down. When I saw all the notes that I have accumulated, I thought to myself that the notes were huge and I figured that I needed to divide the major chunks of information into little pieces. As a result, I have created a graphic organizer at the left side of my notes, behind the red line. Since the notes were categorized into 4 sections, I have created 4 concept maps overall. The direction of plug-in notes stated that I needed to create types of questions that were going to be on the test. Apparently, the timing was really good as I needed to create questions for myself to prepare for the exam that was the day after the lecture. Thus, I created 6 questions for myself and tried to answer it with reference to the notes that I have taken. I was able to solve all the problems except for 1, and so, after the lecture, I have went to the professor and asked for help. The professor commented on how nicely the note was taken and praised upon my note-taking skills. On Thursday, I took the exam by studying the notes and questions that I have created for myself along with other resources. I think I have done well on the exam, but you never know as the mark hasn't been updated yet on Blackboard. However, this note-taking method really made the studying easier and more efficient. Thus, I am planning to use this strategy for all my lecture classes and hopefully, I would accumulate good grades for all of my classes.

1 plus 3 note

Though laptop is allowed in class so students can take note by their notebooks, I prefer taking notes by using my pencil/pen and note. Maybe it is because it has become a habit using pen and paper when I take note; I feel much more comfortable that way. However, there are times when professors go so fast that I have to write the notes very fast. Eventually, I have to rewrite the notes after the class ends. This is the method I usually use: rewrite my notes that I took in class. That way I can recognize and organize my notes much more better, and, in the same time, I can study the materials while I rewrite the notes. After CLS class, I found out the 1 plus 3 note is very similiar to the method I usually use, so I decided to try to adapt the 1 plus 3 note as my note-taking strategy.

Out of all of my classes, I chose to use the note-taking method in my Astronomy class; this class has the most notes, has a lot of terms to organize, and seems to be the best course to adapt the method.

The second picture is the part of the note that I rewrote. The green part is the title, and the other part is the information of the materials. The last picture is the 1 plus 3 note that I have made based on the note.

The 1 plus 3 note is useful because it has the term with summary/definition and the anticipating questions for the exam. I did not need to make two different strategy; instead, I could do both of the strategy at once.

However, I found that this strategy consumed a lot of time. I basically rewrote the note 2 times, wrote note 3 times in total. It is true that rewriting the notes helps me memorizing the materials, but I do not really see the importance of rewriting the note 3 times. Also, because the materials that I used was very limited, the questions that I made was also very limited. Though it is hard to decide to if the strategy was effective to me by only using it once, this strategy was not really useful to me.

iPlug-In Notes

Should I take notes by hand or with my laptop? That was the question I had to answer to myself after attending my first-ever lecture in college. I knew laptops are allowed in college, and I always dreamed of using my computer in class for various reasons; taking notes, looking up things on internet related to the topic, and it's seemed so much more fun to take notes on computer rather than writing everything down by hand. And my handwriting isn't that pretty. Even I have hard time understanding notes I take. However, knowing myself, I might get distracted by Facebook, twitter, and sea of internet. So I thought long and hard about this debate. After attending few more classes, and getting use to the vibe of the college, I felt that laptop is necessity to succeed in college. Not only for taking notes, but to take 'better' notes. It will help me organize, share my notes around quickly and many more. So I decided to take notes on my laptop and found it very convenient. I like to surf the web during class to look up things about a topic the professor is talking about.

But, even with laptop, I somewhat felt unorganized. I take notes on everything professor is teaching and have no problem with translating them to my computer. The problem is that it's still unorganized just like my old notes that I wrote by hand. To look up some topic, I still need to hunt down the heading and waste time on finding related note. The way I take notes on my laptop is through Apples office suite of productivity, Pages. It is good word documenting software and I enjoy using it. But, it's still not up there yet in terms of taking notes. When I discovered the Microsoft Word, I was surprised to see such a intuitive and well-made software is being offered by Microsoft. The notebook layout view on Microsoft Word is perfect way to take notes in organized fashion. It offers simplicity and function at the same time. I was very impressed. The layout is created just for taking notes and has a record feature built into it. This is where I applied plug-in note strategy.

The first time I tried this note taking strategy was with my CFS 388 class. I followed the instruction of taking plug-in notes on blackboard. I used the Microsoft Word notebook layout view and took notes in my usual format. After the lecture, I re-read the notes I took. I made few corrections, typos, and made it neat for the review later. Then I created the questions that I think my professor will ask for the next exam. These questions are based on the notes that I took that day. At the end of the week, I will review the lecture notes as well as the questions I made and answer them. The ones that I can't answer will be the one I will have to focus on for the exam.

Plug-in note taking strategy is really helpful because it really helped me to organize my notes and focused on the topic I need to know. Because of the flexibility of software, I can easily change the fonts to highlight something and change the heading of the topic without searching for the marker. I can erase & fix thing with ease, add tables and even audio to my notes. Anticipating questions based on the notes that day is really helpful. The only negative or the limitation this strategy has is that it's really not helpful those courses that require hand-written drawings, formulas; math, chemistry classes. Other than that, I love this strategy and taking notes on this thing. It really encourage to organize my notes and make it more complete.