Time, 'managerial tools' (Cash Cows, SMART, PESTLE, Cs and Ps etc) as well as some basic maths. (Aleksandra James).
'planning' and 'setting the scene'. lots of good references to key thinkers (Linda Groarke).
o Identifying my MBA objectives
o Time management reading skills. For the time management. I found a useful template in the OU web site called “Time- Calculator” and what it does is calculating the available time per 24hr for study. I have to give an input e.g. Working time and social time etc… It just gave me realistic view on my available time for study.
o Tips for exams do and don’ts (Hilina Bogale).
The physical act of writing with a pen on paper seems to make information lodge in my brain better - so I always do note taking by hand and rarely type them up as I often organise information in diagrams to help me make sense of it. I like to 'mind dump' all my ideas and then go back linking themes and concepts together or rearranging sentences/paragraphs to make more concise, 'flowing' reports. (Laura Slattery).
I have been playing with the idea of apps for a few weeks now. I have settled on Evernote (with a premium upgrade!) as the central storage and I have then collected together compatible apps for different functions. I am using goodreader for PDF's and similar (all the OU books are compatible) you can highlight, bookmark etc and it then produces a summary which you can save to evernote. I have penultimate which you can use a smart screen with a stylus to write in free hand again the notes can be saved across. I also have writepad which translates written text into typed text, dragon dictation which converts text to speech and also grafio which helps you to make charts and diagrams. I am not remotely technical and some of the apps do need practice to get the best out of them but I have just spent five years doing a degree and I NEVER want to have so much paper and notes again. The advantage with evernote is that I have it on my PC/ipad/laptop etc and they all sync automatically plus I have it backed up in the cloud. Lastly it is fully searchable and easy to organise. There are lots of options but I went by reviews and other users comments to choose. (Rachel Bacon).
> OneNote for all notes, synchronised to Iphone via MS skydrive (I don't have an iPad.) I like how oneNote forces to you structure your material - you know what I mean. I love the easy tables and icons etc (use the TODO a lot). I do my daily plan in that also I was plaesed to find that there is an iPhone app for oneNote. It's not really optiimised for the iphone screen , but it does ok I guess.
> MS Excel for gantt chart planning (using a dashboard downloaded from chandoo.org, and hacked to give a daily view).Never did like MS Project.
> MS Word for research notes, so I can use the outline function for structuring - here I don't mind dumping in sections of cut/paste text where relevant. It gets to be a problem with a lot of text and outline compresses it all down
> Google drive for synchonising all files, for backup
> Mind mapping - I have a problem deciding what mind mapping tool to use... I usually use Freemind, but don't think that will sync well to the iphone, so I guess I need to solve this one. Fremind is not very visual either, but its free. I'm pretty sure other students will have some good suggestions here. OneNote has no mind mapping capability, so I need something I can sync via Google drive preferably (Michael Fulton).
