Up to activity 4, page 17. Which is way ahead of where I'm supposed to be. Looking at four posters, and need to Think about them. I'll pause for now and catch up with the follow-up from earlier posts.
Personal Blogs
I'd better learn how to take notes, then I can do so on the other things I intend to study.
https://help.open.ac.uk/notetaking-techniques
Will update this post as I go...
I am reminded that my method in Uni conformed to the adage "a means of transferring information from the notes of the lecturer to the notes oof the student without passing through the minds of either."
"Mind maps can be created using Microsoft Word but there are plenty of apps available that may make it easier. .... mind mapping software" ACTION: look for some.
It wants me to write on my textbooks!
But since they're in PDF... I need to get to know how to add highlights, comments, and so on. So I try to do so, and discover I'm logged into Adobe as Dave! ACTION: fix that!
Done. Note to self, I had to change my password, and it's now longer than it used to be.
I now know how to highlight and to add comments. To add text, I need the paid version. ACTION look into that?
Plans start at £13.14/mo incl. VAT.
Voice notes? Not usually my preferred method, but.. "there are free software packages available on the Internet. A good example is Audacity, which offers the tools for recording and editing your material." https://www.audacityteam.org/ ACTION: find it, test it.
It comes from "Muse Hub" and looks like a very complete program! Will it do a quick voice note? Or would I be better using Google on my phone?
It'll do a quick WAV and "export" it to my OU files area. Good enough.
A good page on notes for languages, mainly about sounds. Since all I plan on doing here is Latin and Ancient Greek, that probably won't be relevant, but might help if I start taking DuoLingo more seriously.
https://help.open.ac.uk/notetaking-techniques/taking-notes-for-languages-students
Overall, not much there I didn't already know, but some tools to look up.
https://studenthublive.open.ac.uk/content/am-i-too-old-age-just-number-17-sep-2024
No, I'm not (surprise!) I've been introduced to problems that others have, or expect to have. Most are irrelevant to me.
There were some interesting tools and terms used that may be helpful. I wish I'd read the guidance on note-taking before attending rather than as a result!
Further interesting demos of what this Connect application is capable of. I'm impressed!
There was mention of a thing called "body doubling" as a study aid. They're using a very different meaning of that phrase from me!
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/body-doubling-adhd#alternatives
https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/pomodoro-technique
That's the Pomodoro technique (and I may have to hunt Amazon for a tomato-shaped timer)
Like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Judge-Analogue-Timer-Tomato-Red/dp/B00SXKZ1TY?th=1
Arrived Wednesday afternoon
And the note-taking techniques
https://help.open.ac.uk/notetaking-techniques
This might be a good place to keep my notes?
That was yesterday evening. Quite a few possible tools were mentioned, but I'm only looking at the freebies.
https://www5.open.ac.uk/library/referencing-and-plagiarism/bibliographic-management
Here's the tool I'm thinking of using
https://service.elsevier.com/app/home/supporthub/mendeley/
I'm signed up for a bunch of OU talks - some from the library, some from the Student Hub. This uses a new (to me) video conferencing tool, Adobe Connect. So it's been downloaded, and so far I've attended one talk. All seems very straightforward, though I'm not yet sure how I get a copy of the chat.
One thing I did notice was that when the slides are being shared, I can click on a link in the slide, and it works!
I did one yesterday from the Library, about reference management tools. Fascinating! I probably won't need it for my OU studies this year or the next, but I can use one of those to get my WEA notes under control.
Later this afternoon there's "Am I too old for this: age is just a number?". The reminder email tells me I can download the slides in advance, so I'll do that.
And in "freshers week" (24th Sep) I have a few more lined up.
Note to self: list of more to sign up for!
https://studenthublive.open.ac.uk/
I have my new email address (jane.williams@ou.ac.uk) and can start looking at the various student discounts. Student Beans is one I've signed up for - it's free, and gives me discounts and freebies at places I actually use. Greggs, KFC... Free delivery on Deliveroo, if they delivered here, which they don't.
A TOTUM card would give more, but it costs per year, and I don't think there's enough there that's useable to be worth it. https://www.oustudents.com/whats-on/totum/
Still, that's another item off the "OU Ready" list.
Not that I expect to use it for actual email all that much - I'm already set up to use my normal personal email for most things. But it should let me register for discounts, library access, things like that.
The problem is that it's an Office 365 account. A good idea, in general, it gives us all a common set of tools that some people may not have. But, they're not the only people to have this good idea, and MS in their wisdom will only let you sign into (and get "new mail" alerts from) one account at a time. I now have three. My work one is set up so I can access it via the Yahoo web email interface, and I rather hoped to do the same here. Or to forward these ones to another account. Or something! But no, not an option. For now, I've got my phone logged into work Outlook (and Teams) and the laptop into OU, but this really isn't ideal.
The first task involved looking through a list of names, and matching them to entries in a table. But the PDF isn't editable (well, it's a textbook, it wouldn't be!) So I need to copy things across to a Word document to do the notes, insertion of names into slots, reflection, and so on.
Copying that table into Word in a table format was awkward, and took forever! I tried using "SensusAccess" to convert the PDF to DOCX, but it still messed up the table formatting. I ended up copying each cell, bit by bit. Aargh!
I'm not quite sure what this is for, or who can see it, but let's try out all the new toys.
Today is the day my registration went through. I don't yet have my new email address or Office 365, but I seem to have quite a lot of other things.
This is Wednesday. I went through "OU Ready" on Monday (except for the parts where I don't yet have access to do the practical), did all the quizzes, and got my brownie badge.
(I wonder, can I insert pictures here?)
Tuesday was phoning to get the payment done (sadly I don't qualify to do this for free).
It seems that while I could wait for dead-tree material to be delivered, it's available as PDF - a much better idea in any case! So I'm working my way through it.
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