A complete guide for students who want to succeed.
This article from listified.com reviews eight online note-taking applications that you might find useful.
Of course, an application you like will help. But you still need to know how to take notes—how to organize them, what to write down, what to leave out, how much detail to include—and that takes practice, whether with a pencil or with a computer.
This article aimed at middle-school teachers actually applies pretty well to those teaching high school and upper elementary students as well.
The ideal, of course, would be for all teachers in a school to teach good habits—teachers, talk to your colleagues and principals!
If you are inspired, ambitious, and motivated, acquiring good habits is easy: follow the advice on this web site, and in my book.
But if you lack inspiration, ambition, and motivation, you are unlikely to make the effort needed to acquire good habits.
What to do?
Talk to people who seem to be inspired, ambitious, and motivated. Find out what drives them. Read about people who have been inspired, ambitious, and motivated and have achieved great things as a result. Seek out people, especially, who are inspired about subjects that leave you bored: maybe they can show you something that will spark your interest. If math is not your thing, for example, find a really good math student, or teacher, and ask: what is it about math that interests and excites you?
Today a colleague began talking about his Grade 11 students. “They don’t take notes,” he said in exasperation. “Not a single one of them.”
Another colleague, overhearing us, joined in. “Isn’t that their problem?” he said. “By Grade 11 they should have figured this stuff out. We shouldn’t have to tell them to take notes and use their homework diaries.”
I wrote Good Habits, Good Students primarily for students. Teachers, for a variety of reasons, rarely teach the habits needed to succeed in school. Students are left on their own to “figure it out.” Unfortunately a huge number don’t figure it out, and they usually blame themselves for their academic disappointments: I’m lazy, I’m no good, I’m stupid. I wrote the book to help students acquire the good habits they need, and to convince them that they can be successful.
But I also wrote the book hoping that teachers and schools would realize that they should be teaching habits. If they did, students would achieve much better results on the “material” taught in school, and would believe in their ability to learn, and would be equipped to go on learning on their own when they are out of school. Grade 11, of course, is a bit late to begin.
Imagine what my colleagues would be saying, though, if their students had been learning and practicing good habits for years. It’s a dream, but it would not be particularly difficult or expensive to make it come true.
First: read every day!
Second: use a homework diary in every class!
And here’s a good list of online tools for students. It’s intended for university students but most of the items listed are equally useful for high school students.
The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion—political or otherwise—which suddenly seems to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our time.
—E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (1973)
So: what kinds of ideas fill your mind?
From Chapter 2 of Good Habits, Good Students:
Here’s a good way to find out where you need the most improvement: check your report card. Don’t just look at the grades, though. Check the comments your teachers write about each subject.
Far too often when students receive report cards, they check their marks and then stop reading. However, if your reports include comments from each teacher, these can be more useful than the grades when it comes to figuring out what you need to do to improve.
Not all comments by teachers are useful in this way. Some consist mostly of a standard description of what the class has studied in the previous term. There may be only a brief comment on your own work, and sometimes such comments emphasize what is most positive—which is nice, but not helpful if you’re trying to identify your weaknesses.
Sometimes, too, teachers’ comments are written in a kind of secret code I call “report-speakâ€. “George has a good understanding of blah blah blahâ€, you read. Sounds good. Actually, however, a “good†understanding may be the third– or fourth–best level, below other possibilities like “excellent†and “very goodâ€. Once you realize this, “good understanding†doesn’t sound so good anymore.
Because comments on reports don’t always include the information you’re looking for, and because they are sometimes written in report-speak, any attempt to use your report card to discover where you most need to improve must include this vital step: asking your teachers, in person.
Before you speak with them, however, do a bit of preparatory work. Continue reading “Where do you need to improve?”
A recent news article reports on research that appears to debunk the standard advice to drink lots of water—”8 glasses a day” being the usual formula.
Here’s the way Will Dunham, reporting for Reuters news service, opened his story:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The notion that guzzling glasses of water to flood yourself with good health is all wet, researchers said on Wednesday.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and Dr. Dan Negoianu of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reviewed the scientific literature on the health effects of drinking lots of water.
People in hot, dry climates and athletes have an increased need for water, and people with certain diseases do better with increased fluid intake, they found. But for average healthy people, more water does not seem to mean better health, they said.
The article goes on to cite a long list of ailments that, according to the researchers, are NOT cured or prevented by drinking water.
Fine. But here’s my question: if you don’t drink water, what will you drink instead?
Coffee? Soda pop? Chocolate milk? Even fruit juice can be overdone. And if you think plain milk is a good idea, do a little research on lactose intolerance. Green tea?— only if it’s not loaded up with sugar.
The short answer: water may not cure your ills, but it won’t mess up your digestion or rot your teeth or lead to diabetes, either.
So go ahead: drink the water.
I’ve just upgraded the site to WordPress 2.5, and after a few months in which I’ve been extremely busy with other things I hope to resume more frequent posting soon. In the meantime, if you find that something on the site doesn’t work, please let me know!
He had not understood that in seventh grade he was responsible for handing in his homework, instead of waiting to be asked.
The New York Times has an article, “Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success”, that echoes much of the advice you’ll find here: learn to file your papers, use a homework diary, find a quiet place to study, etc. The article quotes a Grade 12 boy who, with the help of an organization tutor, raised his grade average from B- to B+:
“I was really happy about that,†he said. “I always thought I could do it, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t. I just needed that backing, that structure.”
All of us—not just students, and not just boys—can benefit from the support of others as we try to improve our habits. A parent, a tutor, a friend—find someone who will help motivate you and keep you on track.