I have learned and gained lots of experience and knowledge about Carmen. I have also learned about various online tools and study strategies to help me do well in classes and manage time.

At the beginning of the course I did not know about the plethora of online tools I could use. My time saving and study habits were also underdeveloped. I used to not really use a planner and my notes were random words and bullet points scattered about. Finally I was bad at time management and I used to just do everything at once last minute. My knowledge and skills and at the end of the course have changed dramatically. I am more efficient at time saving because I use a planner now. My planner has stuff in order of importance and I space out what I want to do now. This allows me to not do stuff last minute.

The most important thing I learned in this module is how to effectively take notes and cite sources. I like to use the skeleton outline. The skeleton outline is when you make the main points on notes the main topic then go in detail below it. Another important thing is citing sources. I learned on specifically on module 6 slides 4 and 5 that the 3 things that make sources good is reliability quality and utility.

One thing I have learned about myself is that when everything gets tough and stressful I am able to grind and be successful when I use the correct strategies of note taking and time management. I was able to be successful with my finals that all happened at the same time in addition to all my final work that was due in all my classes because I learned various strategies with saving time in this class. For example my enhanced notes allowed me to study faster and my planner and google calendar helped me create mini-goals. This has helped me become more confident in my abilities to be successful as an engineer.

I will apply what I learned in this class in the future. I will do this by transferring how I learn and take notes. In my future job I will need to retain and learn some info. I can use my note taking strategies. I can also use the online tools I learned in my jobs, such as google calendar to keep track of goals. I can also use my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to learning in my future job. Finally I am going to use the fact that I learned not to procrastinate in my future career.

To my viewers and students that I am parting with. I want to tell all of you that when the going gets tough, the tough chooses to go on. College is likely one of the most difficult times in your life. Many people may study 8 hours a day and still fail classes. However, college will determine how well you get back up and keep fighting. Make sure to use a planner, make a schedule, use this class to gain knowledge about what tools online to use. Use this class to become an efficient learner and stay ahead of your classes. Learning to stay motivated even after long days will allow you to do well in classes.

The most useful thing I learned in this module is how to effectively and accurately judge websites for reliability, quality and utility. In slides 4 and 5 in the “Lesson: MODULE 6” power point I learned the 3 basic topics for judging a website. Reliability states that the author should be well known and you should be able to contact him/her. The reputation of the author should also be good and it should be peer reviewed.  Next, quality states that the website should be well written with good information that is up to date. Finally, the utility topic states that there should be just the right amount of detail and the detail on the website should be related to the correct topic.

Something specific I have put into practice is using the tricks of googles search engine to filter out or emphasize keywords I want. For example I searched “plum pudding model” with the quotations on google and this gave me only results for plum pudding models instead of giving me random stuff on plums, pudding and models.

Some advice I would offer students in this module is to make sure websites that you cite or use for information are very reliable and well written. This is because websites like Wikipedia are popular but this does not mean that they are accurate.

Calculating Force: ESEPSY BLOG

The main fundamental equation that is the base for all of physics is Force = Mass * Acceleration. This video describes each of the parts of the equation, force, mass and acceleration and provides examples for it. They will also show you a trick of how to memorize the equation using a “triangle”. Force is a push or pull in a direction that is directly proportional to the amount of mass or acceleration. Mass is how heavy an object is and acceleration is the change of speed over time.

This video enhances learning for this topic because, its one thing for me to describe what i’m trying to teach like in my paragraph above. However once you actually see visually how mass and acceleration equal force it becomes a lot more clear and easy to understand. This also supplements the learning because you can visually see the “triangle” to better help you memorize the equation for force.

Alex Ulry

The most useful thing I learned in this module are all the different website online that have different resources to help you learn better and succeed. One specific example of using these online resources to help me is using Mind Maps. I used mind maps to help me create a map of topics I need to study for my Chem 1250 exam. This helped me because I could see all the topics I needed to go over and how one topic may or may not connect to another topic. One useful thing I learned specifically from the readings is on Slide 5 on Lesson 4. This slide states that you can take important quotes found online and copy and paste them into a word document. I think this is a clever idea and the word doc can serve as a database for all the important quotes you find online for a topic. One idea I will put into practice in the future is using Word Documents to help me keep track of notes I find online. I find that when I go on websites to study online it is boring and slow to write stuff down from a website to my notebook, so instead I will copy and paste specific sections of notes I find online to a word document to create my “own” page of notes without having to write anything down by hand. Advice I would give to students is to make sure that you take advantage of online websites and resources. Even if you dont need a website at this moment, copy down the URL so that when something comes up you have access to it.

One of the most useful things I learned in Module 3 is how to effectively email instructors. Students should realize that instructors should not be emailed the same way you text your friends. I learned that instructors should be emailed using a specific template. Greeting, intro, request acknowledgment, closing (Slide 8). Something I have put into practice is using slang and emoticons for professional email. I used to use a lot of slang and excess emoticons but after this module I realized that that stuff isn’t necessary. The tone of the professors emails also improved as I became more professional in my emails. Something from this module that I’ll put into practice is the chat or conference calls. My engineering group is always busy and next time we need to work on a project but we are all busy, we can use a tool to chat online such as Skype. The advice I would give to students after reading the lesson is that you need to be professional when communicating with a group for a project or a professor. Avoid unnecessary fluff like slang or emojis and get to the point. Using professional language will make the professor more likely to reply in a nicer way.