How to be a STUDYING JUGGERNAUT

The purpose for writing this entry is that hopefully you find something in here useful and maybe I can save you some time as you can learn from my mistakes.

I have dyslexia and have struggled with it for most of my life. As an adult it's lasting impact was to make it very hard for me to read and comprehend information. This in itself isn't a terrible thing, all it means is that for every hour a normal person reads it will take me about 2-3 times as long to get the same information from material. So I have had to learn to be very efficient at what I spend my time on or just not bother. My weakness was always reading, studying and test writing, my natural strength has been hands on knowledge. I have a very acute three dimensional perception and understanding of objects if I can take something apart and get my hands on it. For me studying was very hard. At one point I had someone tell me that all I knew how to do was write exams and was only book smart ... it wasn't meant as a compliment but I took it as one and figured I must be doing something right :)

I feel very happy with my progress studying lately. Two of the biggest hurtles for me has been to:

1. keep from cramming before writing papers and
2. retain the information after I have written an paper.

Like allot of people who are writing power engineering papers, I would setup an exam date then plan for the studying, usually cramming the last couple of weeks before exam. After the exam would loose most of the knowledge gained from cramming until the next time I wrote an exam similar and had to re-learn the information once again.

I wasn't happy with this way of studying for exams but didn't have any real way to change my approach up until now. Knowing about reviewing periodically and all the other studying bits of knowledge didn't really help me get focused enough at the start to make me take advantage of spacing out my studying.

By starting early and spacing out studying for my next exam I will avoid cramming and retain the information. Ideally I want to be able to not study extra at all for the exam but rather just go in for the exam on exam date.

How am I doing this? By making up study flash cards from the material right away, then using a modified Leitner approach, spacing out repetitions based on how confident I am with my answer. Following some simple steps that work very well done on a daily basis:

My body is my temple

I have found that studying is a very intense thing to do, which tends to increase stress greatly so have found that if I make sure I am well rested, have eaten and exercised I don't get bogged down as easily.

One key is to study right after exercising, John Ratey has stated that the brain is more capable of learning right after exercise up to 2-3 hours depending on the intensity. Weight training tends to increase growth of new cells and intense cardio solidifies the new cells and information that was associated with learning. Ideally a cardio exercise that involves using deterity and not just a droning treadmill, elliptical etc.

REVIEWING Previous Cards according to date due (for warm up)

Essentially these are long term cards that I know but come up for review on a regular basis. The schedule depends on the confidence I have in the card. Essentially for every right answer (e^(4 * % correct * % of 5) )* 1.7 . If a card is incorrect I review it the next day, if not it is delayed by so many days. The more right and more times asked the longer the delay. The idea is to use a leitner type study system.

These cards have been asked before and are usually correct the last time.

REVIEW previous DAYS new flashcards to solidify new material

Memorized the card by looking at the card and writing down everything I can without looking at the back.... a formula sheet can be used as this will be memorized as well. Look at back of card to see if correct, make note of any errors quickly then repeat. Make sure not to have any answers visible and write down answer again quickly after looking. Do this until the card can be written out without error. If I am having problems remembering then draw on the back/highlight words etc, anything to make more sense of the information.

If done right the basic knowledge will have been digested overnight so remembering it will be allot easier.

Learn NEW cards - usually no more than 10-15 cards

This is done only while my mind is fresh. Walk through the information step by step making sure to understand each piece of information and why it is on the card. Make notes on the back, highlight etc to make more sense of the information.

Don't even try to memorize the information, just make sure it all makes sense. I only do a max of 10-15 new cards. Depending on how detailed they are it could be only 5-6. It really depends on how fresh I am and if I am getting frustrated.

STOP when things stop making sense

Reducing stress greatly improves learning and retention, so if I am getting frustrated I know I will be undoing any learning I do, so I quit for the day.

SPACE out repetitions to prevent overload and retain information

This is done using the review step, but to me this was the hardest step to do as it involves prior planning and daily review in small amounts to prevent cramming before an exam and forgetting after the exam.

I accidentally found out that If I took new cards one day, went over them till I understood them but didn't try to memorize them, then the next day set to memorizing them that I could digest much more new information than I had before and not be stressed about learning. This opened my eyes to spreading this system out over time and eventually, feeling confident that I would know all the information before exam.

The last exam I wrote, I crammed ... but had started this process and saw how well it worked I wanted to start right away for the next exam and test my theory.

So instead of procrastinating about studying then at the last minute cramming I have started a daily routine that is very manageable and with luck will allow me to not have to cram (I really don't want to do any cram type review before the exam) and hopefully be able to keep the info after.

As for the mechanics of the cards I use google docs to enter correct or not correct answers using a form to spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is set up to dynamically compile all the information on all the answers as I go so when I enter an new question it is part of the system without having to pre-program question numbers. This leaves it very flexible. The forms are pre-populated with current time and question number for review. As well all notes, questions, and forms have links for easy data entry. Essentially leaving me with only worrying about making flash cards and answering them. If I am away from the internet, I print off a list of questions and enter them when i get back.

As for the cards I use FastStone Capture to directly clip images of the question/answer into word using a full page per question split in the middle and exported to PDF for printing / reference online. I print off a copy and leave one on google docs linked to spreadsheet.

The cards are kept in sequential order since I review them based on when they are due on the spreadsheet.

I use a presentation folder to keep notes/formula sheets in as these have no rings, have a hard plastic cover and clear plastic pages to insert full page sheets of paper inside. Very compact and clean.

As for notes I use the cornel system for taking notes from books/lectures etc then summarize on one page each chapter / topic using mind mapping. The key is to keep only key points on mindmap and similar to the formula sheets only basic information. The idea is to draw associations with other items not to fully explain, that is done on the cornel sheets. Placing the cornel sheets behind the mindmap in the presentation folder so that only mindmaps are showing on one side keeps it simple and clean when reviewing.

When I study a card I write out the full answer, if it is a problem type question I do every step as if it were my answer on the exam. This way I am in the habit of writing out full questions.

I hope that this has been helpful

Google Wave First Look [Screenshot Tour]

Google Wave First Look [Screenshot Tour]: "

If you're not one of the 100,000 lucky users who gets an invitation to Google Wave today, don't fret. You can check out Google Wave right here.

But first, ground rules. Click on all images in this post to see it full size. Uppercase 'Wave' refers to the entire Google Wave product. Lowercase 'wave' refers to an individual message or document. Think of a lowercase wave like an email or a Google Doc that you're collaborating on with other people. The screenshots in this post are from the Wave developer preview, not wave.google.com, invites to which are going out today. We'll update this post with anything significantly new in the non-preview version when we get our grubby little paws on the proper server invitation.

Ready? Let's go.

Inside Google Wave

When you log into Wave, the default view is a three-column, 4-module layout. From left to right, the first column includes Navigation on top (think of this as your Inbox, Sent, and labels in Gmail) and Contacts below (think of this as your GTalk buddy list). The second column is the list of active waves in your Inbox, and the third column is where you can start a new wave or open a wave.

Here's what it looks like. (Click to enlarge.)

When someone updates a wave in your inbox, it turns bold and moves to the top of your inbox—just like email. If a contact of yours is online, a little green dot appears on on his or her icon.

All the modules are collapsible and dock themselves in the upper part of the screen. If you've collapsed your inbox and a new wave gets updated, it flashes green. Here I've clicked on new wave and minimized all the other modules to expand my workspace. (Click to enlarge.)

You can add all sorts of rich content to your wave, like a YouTube video, Google Map, image, links, or anything that a gadget enables. (More on gadgets below.) Here I've added some colored text and embedded a video clip in my wave. (Click to enlarge.)

When I finish typing and click the Done button on my wave, Wave pops up the 'Add participants' module so I can share my wave with anyone on my contacts list. You can search for a contact by name, or just drag and drop anyone to the wave you choose. (Click to enlarge.)

Once you've shared a wave, the magic starts to happen. At first you'll swoon over the ability to watch your co-waver type in real-time. It's weird in a good, we're-living-in-the-future way to see another person's cursor hard at work outputting characters, key by key on your own screen. But you get over that novelty pretty quickly. (Most likely your IM client can do that; anyone who's used collaborative editors like SubEthaEdit have seen this as well.)

You can reply to an entire wave like an IM or an email by clicking the reply button on a wave's toolbar. But what's most cool is the ability to reply to bits of a message inline. This lets you and your collaborators annotate the wave as you go.

For example, I gave a talk about Wave here in San Diego, and prepared my talk notes in a wave. At the beginning, I did an audience survey to gauge the level of experience with Wave-like technology. I was able to insert replies to the questions in Wave as I went. (Even better would have been to have a co-presenter or note-taker do that for me.)

You can collapse or expand inline comments easily. Here's what the talk wave looks like with comments collapsed. Notice the small talk bubbles on the top Audience survey section. (Click to enlarge.)

Here's what that same wave looks like with inline comments expanded. (Click to enlarge.)

Your replies inside or to a wave can also be marked as private; so if Jack and Jill and I are collaborating on a wave and Jill wants to tell me something about Jack in-wave that Jack shouldn't see, she can click on the drop-down on the upper right of a wave and choose 'Private Reply' as shown. (Click to enlarge.)

Once you've entered your private reply, Wave prompts you to add participants to just that reply. That's because every reply is a wave in and of itself. You can create a new wave from any reply or copy a wave to a new wave, too.

Besides real-time updates, other 'holy crap' feature of Google Wave is wave revision playback. If someone adds you to a wave late in the game, after lots of conversation and annotation has already happened, you can click on the playback button to see how it was constructed over time. Think of this like a slideshow through Wikipedia page revisions. Here's a quick video clip of what playback looks like on a wave I was in on this morning.

Just like Gmail, Google Wave offers powerful advanced search operators, wave tagging, file uploads (though those are wonky for me in the dev preview), and saved searches. In addition to tags, Wave also offers folder. Folders! The interface is completely drag-and-drop: you can grab any wave and drag it to the trash or a folder.

Wave Extensions: Gadgets and Robots

Wave is a completely extensible platform, like Firefox. Wave extensions come in two flavors: gadgets and robots.

A gadget is a piece of rich content that you can add to a wave. A few example gadgets are available in the Gadget gallery.

Click on the puzzle piece on a wave's toolbar to add a gadget to the wave. One useful gadget is the 'Who is Coming?' gadget that lets you invite folks to an event and get RSVPs quickly and easily.

The most useful gadget I've seen so far is the Ribbit conference call gadget. Add it to a wave, and everyone adds their phone number to it. (You only see your own number, not everyone else's.) Click the "Start Conference" button, and everyone's phone rings—and you're on the phone, while you collaborate on a wave. (Click to enlarge.)

For more on the Ribbit Wave gadget, check out Rafe Needleman's review.

Robots are email addresses that you add to your contact list. Then, when you are in need of their services, you add a bot to a wave so they can perform some action on its contents. A robot can modify the contents of a wave, and several already exist that do silly to useful actions.

For example, Eliza the Robot Shrink (elizarobot@appspot.com) will chat with you about anything—useful when you're the only one of your friends who has a Wave invite and you've no one to talk to.

More usefully, the Bloggy bot (blog-wave@appspot.com) will publish a wave onto a Blogger blog for you. For example, I have Bloggy in my contacts, and added it to my Wave talk wave as shown here. Notice the 'Bloggy published this wave here' message in yellow at the top of the wave. (Click to enlarge.)

Click on the 'here' link and you go to my test Wave blog, which gets the contents of that wave on it. (Click to enlarge.)

If another Wave user happens upon that blog post, s/he can comment on it in-blog, and those new updates will show up in my Wave client. Right now, you have to be logged into Wave to see blogged content; but that won't always be the case. Google is working on making published Wave content read-only for all users, even those not logged into Wave.

Polly the Pollster (polly-wave@appspot.com) is another extremely useful bot which lets you create and distribute polls to survey wave collaborators quickly.

Other bots do things like automatically link Twitter usernames to their Twitter page, clean up empty replies (which proliferate quickly for some reason), and insert stock quotes. I expect we'll see tons more gadgets and bots bloom over the next year. Here are some more featured Wave extensions, courtesy of Google.

But What Will We Use Google Wave For?

The most frequent question I get about Google Wave is: "But what would I use it for?" Personally I can't wait to use it to take meeting minutes collaboratively and to co-write documents like blog posts and articles online with my editors and co-conspirators. Instead of using something like Campfire or IRC to chat with my fellow Lifehacker editors, I could see using Wave as group chat—but with inline and private replies, which are key.

Right now, like all collaboration tools, Wave is only as good as how many of the people you work (and play) with have it. Even though I was one of the developers touched by an angel, with access to the preview, I didn't actually use Wave very much because almost zero of my actual friends and co-workers were on it. So as far as I can see, uses for Wave in your life will open up as the product itself opens up to more users who care enough to wrap their heads around it and start putting valuable information in it.

If you're more of a moving-pictures learner, Google's new Wave overview video nicely illustrates some of the features I've highlighted above.

Got questions about Google Wave? Post 'em up in the comments, and we'll answer what we can.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, is trying to resist a bad Wave pun. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

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Wolfenstein PS3 - awesome :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujycthb4B8E