HeadHeartHand Blog &#187; New Student

New Student Tip #7: Feedly

New Student Tip #8: Covenant Eyes

New Student Tip #9: The Why of Note-taking

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #9: The Why of Note-Taking

David Murray — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 05:00:51 +0000

Note-taking begins with a big question: ”Why?”

Why take notes in lectures?

It may seem an easy question with an obvious answer but once you ask it, you’ll realize that there are a few possible answers and that your answer will determine how you take notes. Lets ask three students why they take notes:

Student 1: Because the teacher is teaching it.

Some vainly try to write down everything a teacher says. While erring on writing too much is better than writing too little, try to acquire the valuable skill of knowing what to write down and what to simply listen to. That will give you time to think about what’s being taught rather than just being a typist. It will also save you from RSI.

Student 2: To pass an exam

If exam success is why you are taking notes, then you’ll only want to take notes on lectures and parts of lectures that are examinable. You will try to find out from the syllabus or the teacher what will be in the exam and then take notes only when exam content is being taught. At other times you will probably switch off.

Student 3: To expand my knowledge

If this is your motive then you will take far more notes than student #2 but less than student #1. You realize that you are paying for an education, not just exam results, and therefore you will gather as much valuable information as you can in as efficient a way as possible. This student also recognizes that taking notes rather than just reading handouts and course books is one of the best ways to cement knowledge in the memory.

Obviously I hope you will be student #3, but let me add a few more motives to make this choice than just getting value for money or preparing for your career.

Motive 1: Respect for the teacher

It is unquestionably one of the most demoralizing aspects of teaching for a lecturer to pour 10-20 hours into preparing a lecture only to see a couple of students writing or typing while the rest either slouch in their chairs or text and chat online. He or she may not be the best teacher in the world but they are usually trying their very best and it’s basic human decency to show you value them and their work by actually typing at least some of what they say.

Motive 2: Acknowledge your inexperience

Most teachers don’t teach just to bore you or to occupy their time. They actually believe what they are teaching is important and useful, even vital. It may not seem relevant or helpful to you, but then teachers have been around quite a bit longer than most students and have learned through experience what’s going to help you down the road. I’ve lost count of the number of tiimes I’ve been emailed by students a few years later to ask for help with something that they did not pay attention to when in class.

Motive 3: Learn how to teach

So, the content is not exactly scintillating, but what about the teacher’s teaching style? Is it something you can learn from – to copy or avoid? No matter what career we choose, we will all eventually teach someone something; most likely in a group setting too. Learn from the teacher’s good example and also his or her mistakes.

Motive 4: Strengthen self-discipline

Although teachers are increasingly banning laptops or wireless internet service from their classes, the temptation to check the Internet is still there for most students, even if only on their cell phones. But this is where good and bad habits are learned. If you get into the bad habit of continually checking social media or doing email when someone else is talking, you’ll carry that into other relationships too, and into your later career, which will damage your relationships and eventually your career prospects. Lectures, especially boring ones, are good training grounds for developing valuable listening skills especially for the innumerable boring meetings you’ll have to attend throughout your life.

That’s the Why? Next the How?

Other Resources

New Student Tip #7: Feedly

New Student Tip #8: Covenant Eyes

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students).

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #8: Covenant Eyes

David Murray — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 05:00:14 +0000

Seven tips and you haven’t had to pay a cent yet!

Sorry to spoil your student paradise, but you’ll have to pay for this one. However, it’s a small price to pay considering the potential cost if you don’t.

The greatest danger for most students today is the Internet. Yes, it’s brought a lot of benefits and pluses into our lives as we’ve seen in the previous seven tips. But there are also downsides, and one of them is Internet pornography.

Of course pornography has always been a temptation, but what’s changed with the Internet is:

It’s so much easier to access, just a click of a finger.
It’s so much easier to view in total privacy without anyone finding out.
It’s so much cheaper, with so much available for “free.”
It’s so much worse, with the most vile forms of porn side-by-side with “entry-level” porn.
It’s looking for you, with many ways to trick you into seeing it.

Because of the above, many more people have accessed porn through curiosity, by accident, or by being targeted with it, resulting in many more people and a much wider range of people becoming addicted.

“But what’s the big deal?” many ask. “Where’s the harm in a little bit of porn?” Here’s the big deal; here’s the harm.

1. It’s a sin. According to Jesus, it is breaking the seventh commandment (Matt. 5:27-30).

2. It could send you to hell. See Jesus again (Matt. 5:27-30).

3. It’s hating your neighbor. If people didn’t watch it, people wouldn’t make it. If you view it, you are helping to create it. You are creating temptation danger for others, but also destroying the lives of those involved in making it, often against their wills.

4. It weakens the will: If you succumb to this, you will succumb to other sins too.

5. It weakens spirituality: Due to guilt, porn users cannot expect communion with God, delight in prayer, enjoyment in the Word, or spiritual growth.

6. It destroys usefulness: Few porn users are zealous or sacrificial in Christ’s service. Like other addictions is is a costly distraction that will adversely impact every area of your life, including your career.

7. It perverts your view of women/men: You will find it virtually impossible to look at any woman/man without lustful thoughts.

8. It will spoil sex: If you are an unmarried porn user, you are already undermining your future marriage by storing up perverse images and practices that will soil and spoil the most intimate moments.

9. It may end your marriage: 50% of Christian divorces cite porn use as the reason. “Gutted!” is the word heard most from broken and betrayed wives. “Gutted!” Think about that.

10. It will never leave you: Porn is sticky. Unlike other experiences it is not easily forgotten. Many ex-porn users will tell you that it’s virtually impossible to eradicate what they have viewed from their memories.

Given the availability, accessibility, danger, and wrongness of porn, we need help to stop it reaching us and to stop us reaching it. That’s where Covenant Eyes comes in. It’s a Christian company whose service is built upon Job 31:1 “I have made a covenant with my eyes; Why then should I look upon a young woman?”

Once Covenant Eyes is installed on all computers and mobile devices, you will benefit from the following services:

Internet Accountability: Covenant Eyes monitors the websites visited, the search terms used, and the YouTube videos watched, and lists them in an easy-to-read report for each user name. This is then sent to your chosen Accountability partner to start a conversation about healthy online habits.

Internet Filtering: This blocks inappropriate web content based on age-appropriateness. You can even create custom block and allow lists, or block the Internet completely at certain times of day.

This costs $9.99 per month for individual users or $13.99 for a family account which lets you have as many user accounts as you want. Yes, $9.99 per month is quite hefty for a student, but on the other hand, think of the cost if you do fall into temptation and become a porn addict. Maybe you can persuade you parents to take out a family account to cover you and your siblings. Personally, I believe it’s an essential part of parenting to cover each family member with a service like this.

And remember this is not just about porn – there are many other Internet dangers we need protection from. Also, positively, this is about building good Internet habits and regulating time spent online in a disciplined accountable way.

Maybe you don’t want Dad or Mom to see your Internet choices. That itself may be a warning sign. However, you can choose other people to be your accountability partner – a mature friend or an elder in your church maybe. My wife is mine and I am hers.

For more detailed help, see The Porn-Free Family Plan from Tim Challies or my Top 10 Books on Fighting Porn, where you will find much Gospel hope if you are already ensnared.

Here’s the Covenant Eyes promo video and the sign-up.

Other Resources

New Student Tip #7: Feedly

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #7: Feedly

David Murray — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 05:00:54 +0000

Blogs and websites have largely taken over from newspapers and magazines as sources of news, opinion, and articles on current issues. As a student who wants to learn constantly, pray knowledgeably, and witness effectively you will want to be reading a wide selection of the best blogs and websites.

Time Waster?
But how do you do this? Do you have to visit multiple sites every day? That’s a tiresome time-waster that you won’t keep up for long.

Instead, you want to use a Blog/Website Reader like Feedly which you can access via your browser or via an App on your phone or Apple Mac. Once you’ve signed up for this free service, you can immediately and easily start subscribing to blogs and websites so that any fresh content is sent automatically into Feedly for you to read, bookmark, or share via Social Media. You simply enter the name of the blog or website in the Feedly search bar and from the search results you choose what to subscribe to.

I subscribe to over a hundred blogs and websites, which would take me a couple of hours to get round every day to check for new articles. But using Feedly, I can spend about 20 minutes skimming over the headlines and article summaries and pick the ones I want to read, bookmark, or share.

Where do I start?
That still leaves you with the big question of which blogs, etc. Feedly offers you a number of categories to browse for the best blogs in various subject areas. But to help you get started, I’ve attached a screenshot below of my Feedly subscriptions to give you some suggestions to start with. This also demonstrates the value of another feature on Feedly – the ability to organize your subscriptions into categories so that you can choose what to read based on the time you have available or what you are looking for. I have four categories:

Christian Blogs (1): These are my first division blogs, the ones I read just about every weekday.
Christian Blogs (2): These are my second division blogs, which I still try to read every day, but if I’m pushed for time I’ll leave them for another day.
Technology: Blogs that help me keep abreast of technology, social media trends, etc. I read these maybe once or twice a week.
Miscellaneous: A collection of blogs on writing, education, politics, weather, etc. Again, a once or twice a week read.

For the sake of space and usefulness to you, I’ve only included the first two categories in the screenshot. Why not pick 10-20 of them from from column 1 (Christian Blogs 1) to get started and then gradually add more if you are finding you can do this in a time-efficient manner. While you need to exercise discernment in all your reading, there are some blogs in the second column (Christian Blogs 2) that need to be read with greater discernment.

Other Resources

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #6: Calendar

David Murray — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 05:00:33 +0000

For most High Schoolers, Mom is their calendar. She keeps track of classes, school trips, holidays, doctor visits, swimming club, etc.

Then students go to college, and chaos ensues as Mom steps back. Students start forgetting classes, missing meetings, double-booking swimming and volleyball, running late for just about everything, and just being in a constant tizzy.

The answer is not the back of your hand or blizzards of post-it notes. The answer is a calendar, ideally a digital one.

There are multiple calendar apps and services out there, but the two standouts are Google calendar or Apple’s iCal for Mac users. Whatever you choose, make sure your calendar has the following features:

1. Cross-platform syncing. You need your calendar to sync across multiple devices so that you can enter events and access your calendar wherever you are and whatever device you’re working on - cellphone, Tablet, PC or laptop.

2. Notifications. When you enter an event you should usually set up a notification as well, so that the calendar will send you an email, a beep, or a buzz a specified number of minutes beforehand.

3. Year, Month, Week, and Day Views. Sometimes you need to drill down to a specific day to see what you are doing at 12 noon. Other times you need to see the week on one page to identify areas of over-scheduling or perhaps areas where you can schedule study time.

4. Color coding. You may want to assign color coding for different kinds of events – classes, sport, church, etc. You definitely want to color code study time so that you can see at a glance if you are allocating enough hours to assignments and exam prep.

5. Start and finish times. You need the facility to enter start and finish times so that it blocks off a visible portion of your calendar and you don’t schedule anything to begin before the previous event ends.

6. Location. Classes take place in different buildings. Games and competitions vary their venues. You want a calendar that lets you enter where as well as when.

7. Sharing. This is not a must-have, but eventually (we hope) you will have a significant other in your life and you’ll want (I hope) him or her to know where you are and when you are available. It’s therefore helpful to have the ability to share calendars. And if you’ve got nothing to hide (!) why not make it available to your parents too, so that they can schedule family events and trips with you.

Let me finish up with a few extra tips.

1. Enter the event as soon as you can. Don’t wait until later and hope you’ll remember to enter it and get all the details right. Just get into the habit of entering the data immediately.

2. Schedule everything. It’s tempting to just schedule classes and other events that you must attend. However, unless you schedule some of the more optional events – they probably won’t happen. For example, you should schedule blocks in your calendar for studying, for exercise, for friends.

3. Schedule margin. Don’t schedule events so close that you are always rushing from one thing to another. Estimate how long it will take you and then add some margin to allow for traffic, unplanned conversations, etc.

4. Use small blocks. The best studying gets done in large uninterrupted blocks of time. So, where you see these possibilities in your calendar, mark them down. Then you’ll see other bits and pieces – 30 minutes here, 40 minutes there – what should you do with them? These are valuable but easily wasted time slots. Without undermining what I said about allowing for margin, you may want to use some of these 20-30 minute blocks for the multiple small to-dos of each day like email, phone calls, errands, etc. Don’t shorten, interrupt, and waste substantial study time blocks with these little things.

5. Check your calendar. No point in going to all the bother of entering all that data and then not checking it. Don’t just rely on the beep or the buzz a few minutes beforehand. Every Saturday evening or Monday morning you should look at the week ahead and make sure you have a good sense of what’s planned. Then every evening, check for the next day’s events and plan accordingly.

6. Accountability. It’s a good idea to ask someone to look at your calendar from time to time to see if you are using time well. Ask someone who is well-organized and self-disciplined to take a look and offer advice.

Other Resources

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #5: Lastpass

David Murray — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 05:00:25 +0000

I just counted how many different passwords and usernames I have.

Sixty eight (68!).

And I can’t remember one of them.

That’s partly because no two are the same for any of the multiple online services, accounts, memberships, etc., that I use.

Which helps keeps the hackers out. But it often leaves me out in the cold too as I try the bazillion possible combinations.

Sound familiar?

Like me, you probably have tried writing them all down, but the consequences of losing all that information or having it stolen are just too horrendous to contemplate.

A couple of years ago, I tried one of those password manager apps, but it was quite expensive at the time (@$70 a year), and every software update seemed to throw a new spanner in the works that took forever to fix.

A few months ago, though, I found the ideal solution, Lastpass.

Some of the benefits are:

A single master password
Remembers all of your passwords and usernames.
Lastpass can create secure passwords for you.
A simple user interface to organize and edit your passwords.
You can chose auto-login so that as soon as you go to a site like Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, etc, it automatically logs you in.
Lastpass encrypts all data before it leaves your device.
As you browse and enter passwords, Lastpass will prompt you to store them.
Install on any number of laptops, home and work computers – PC or MAC.
Store secure notes in the vault.

And its another free service, just like the previous four New Student Tips!

Probably that’s all you need, but I pay the extra $12 per year for premium service which lets me use it on all my mobile devices too. Plus, there are some really neat sharing features which will help you if your family or friends share access to online services.

There are two ways of using the service. The first is to go to the site you want access too and Lastpass will either log you in automatically or auto fill and then prompt you to hit enter. Or simply click on the Lastpass plug-in icon on your browser navigation bar, then click on the website I want to use and Lastpass takes me there and signs me in.

Now where did I put that Master Password?

Here’s a brief video summary:

Other Resources

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #4: Diigo

David Murray — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 05:00:03 +0000

I’m sure most of you have searched Google for a particular subject (e.g. New Atheism), found five million results, and given up trying to find a worthwhile post after five or six pages.

Or maybe you’ve tried to refine your search with multiple combinations of pluses, minuses, quotation marks, etc, and narrowed your search down to…one million results. Hmmm.

And then there’s that article you remember reading last year on the subject, but what website was it on? And who wrote it?

Don’t you wish you had your own personalized Google, one that was tailored just to your interests, that would spare you so much of this frustration?

Well, you can. Welcome to Diigo. Strange name, but excellent service.

Simple Bookmarking

I started using this simple bookmarking system maybe 4-5 years ago and although it’s taken 5-10 minutes every day to keep it organized and updated, I’ve saved myself so much time and hassle in the long term, especially when I’m wanting to write articles or prepare addresses on particular subjects.

Basically I use Diigo to bookmark, highlight, and tag every useful article I read on the Internet. You can get a Diigo plug-in for most browsers or your cell phone so that when you read anything good on the Internet, you simply click to bookmark it, highlight any particularly helpful text in the article, and tag it with relevant words.

Fast Search

Now, when I want to search for articles on say “Worship,” I go to my Diigo homepage and enter my search there. That brings up any articles I’ve tagged with “Worship,” gives a brief description of the article, and even shows me any text I highlighted when I originally read it. Soooo much quicker! And if you stick at it over time, eventually you’ve built up your own personalized Google, a search engine that is tailored to your own special interests. A few other neat features are:

1. You can tag pages: You not only save the page to Diigo but add a tag or two to make future searching so much easier.

2. You can annotate pages. You can attach “post-it” notes to webpages and read notes that others have posted there too.

3. You can follow other people. If you and a few other friends in your class join up, then you can follow one another, sharing research resources and saving a ton of time.

4. You can mark articles “Read later.” Instead of seeing a good article, deciding to come back to it later, and forgetting where you read it, you can save articles for reading later, something best done in batches.

As I explained in Tip #3, you can use Evernote to archive blog articles and web resources. However, I’ve found that Diigo is a better system for this specific purpose of saving helpful articles for my research, study, and work. That’s all it does and it does it well, whereas Evernote does lots of other things too.

If you are starting out on a course of study that could eventually become your career, Diigo is an excellent way of building an educational resource that you will come back to many times in the future. I find myself using articles and websites today that I bookmarked four years ago and that I would never have remembered myself.

And yet again, it’s a free service. Fourth tip and fourth free service! Student Nirvana!

Other Resources

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #3: Evernote

David Murray — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:00:57 +0000

Life was complicated when it was just paper you had to worry about. Then we oldies only had our desk and “In Tray” to get organized – though even that was a daily challenge. Thanks to the digital revolution, we now also have stuff in multiple other places – the cloud, our phones, our computers, and our email. JPGs, PDFs, DOCs, MOVs, MP3s, HTML’s and XLS’s are coming at us from all directions.

How on earth (or how in the cloud) do you keep track of it all?

If only there was one place that kept everything – digital and paper. And if only it was easily searchable. Oh, and if I could access it from anywhere, that would be amazing too. I guess we’ll have to wait until the next Steve Jobs to design that though.

Do not despair, Evernote is here.

The Evernote process is a really simple three-step process: Capture, Organize, Search.

Capture

There are multiple ways of getting your information into Evernote using your computer, phone, tablet or email.

Write notes: Very simple note-taking within the app – ideal for lectures.

Upload: Upload files such as Word docs and pdfs – perfect for all the class handouts.

Email: You can email documents and other files to Evernote via your own Evernote email address.

Web clipper: When you come across any good blogs or websites, just click the Evernote web-clipper plugin button in your browser and it automatically saves it to Evernote.

Photo: Take photographs of receipts, letters, menus, handwritten notes, anything really, and send it to Evernote by email or use the Evernote App for even quicker results.

Organize

Everything you send to Evernote automatically goes into your Evernote Inbox. At the end of every day, or every few days, you’ll want to go in there and organize it all into notebooks. You might have one for each subject or area of your life (e.g. finances, Church, vacation, etc) and you can even have sub-notebooks within a notebook. You can also add tags for more detailed organization.

Or you can take the next step in becoming an organizational ninja by doing the organizing as you go along. For example by using @English Lit in your subject line, anything you send to Evernote by email will automatically go into your English Lit notebook. Tags can also be added to anything you upload using the hashtag #. The web clipper allows this organizing as you clip too.

Search

So you’ve got into the habit of uploading, emailing, clipping, photographing everything into Evernote. Your desk is clear and so is your mind. All your paper and data are in one place. But now you need to search for a bill, or an assignment, or a blog article. Where did I put that?

Open Evernote and start by searching in your Notebooks. Click on one to see everything you’ve ever entered there. Hmm, didn’t find it. Maybe I put it in another Notebook, but which one? What now?

Dead easy. Go to the Evernote search box and enter a word or phrase that you think is in the document or file. It will then quickly search everything in your Evernote and list the matches. This for me is the most powerful feature of Evernote. Its search machine is unparalleled in speed and accuracy. It will even search for words on handwritten notes, photos of brochures and menus, etc. You can search via your desktop your phone App, or via the Internet if you are separated from all your devices.

Other Features

There are many other features and benefits of Evernote that you’ll discover as you go along. For example, you can share your notebooks or notes with others too. And here’s Tim Challies’ great tip on how to get your Kindle notes and highlights into Evernote.

And like my previous two New Student Tips, Dropbox and Wunderlist, Evernote is also free and the free version should be enough for most students. However, I pay the small price of $5 per month for a premium account which allows me to access my Notebooks offline, improves searchability, increases my monthly upload limit and adds an extra layer of security if I need it. Sign up for Evernote here.

Other Resources

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)

New Student Tip #2: Wunderlist

David Murray — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 09:00:32 +0000

Most students can get through High School without a To-Do list. Maybe they write a few things down on their hand or enter a couple of reminders on their phone when exam times come round. But they generally get by with just keeping things in their head.

If you try that at college you’ll soon go off your head or lose your head. Assignments, projects, exams, meetings, lectures, seminars and sports schedules come thick and fast and soon you are either missing important appointments and deadlines or else you are just scraping by, but your stress levels are soaring. You’re in that constant frazzled state of “Did I remember everything?” “Have I forgotten something?”

So you start writing things down on a card, a notebook, your phone or your computer.

But then the challenges multiply further. How do you set reminders? How do you prioritize? How do you separate long-term projects from short-term actions? How do you gather multiple To-Do’s under one project? How do I distinguish college To-Do’s from home To-Do’s? How do I make sure I’ve got my list with me when and where I want it? How do I share To-Do lists with my family, friends, or colleagues?

Well, I’ve tried just about every To-Do system under the sun. Some, like OmniFocus are so complicated that you almost need to go to college to learn it. Others are so simple they end up being too simple; they just don’t have the capacity or the flexibility you need as life grows more complicated.

My personal favorite, which I’ve been using for about six months now, is Wunderlist.

I find that it’s complex enough to handle every project I’m involved in and simple enough to handle basic things like shopping lists. And before I get to the benefits, the great news is that like Dropbox, Wunderlist also is free! So what do you get?

Easy-to-use interface across all platforms.
Use on Desktop, Tablet, or Smartphone.
Change list on one device and it automatically syncs in real time to all the others too.
Set due dates with visual and audible reminders.
Create different To-Do lists for different areas of your life (home, college, church, finances, etc).
Set priorities so that urgent tasks are gathered from each list in one place.
Select “Today” for all tasks due today.
Add notes to tasks.
Share lists and collaborate with friends, family, and colleagues.

Visit Wunderlist here or watch the video here. Also visit my Top 10 Books for Students here.

Other Resources

Thriving at College by Alex Chediak (for students)

Preparing Your Teens For College by Alex Chediak (for parents of students)