Sunday, April 22, 2012

Last App!

Maia- D's Do and Due & building blocks for final exam
Jennifer- D's Do and Due & building blocks for final exam


We chose to use the Do and Due strategy for our courses. We chose to use this strategy because we wanted to get ready for the final until our due date. Do and due's were very effective in showing what we needed to achieve that day, and it helps us to prepare for our exams in advance. It helps us to "chunk our tasks" so that we can get done with our studying and projects on time, without trying to do it all at once. It helps us to feel less stressed out because we know what to do for each day, getting our work done one step at a time. We felt motivated as we checked off each thing on our list.

We chose to do the building blocks for final exam technique because we wanted to prepare for our final exam by dividing up small tasks for each day until the exam date. This helped us to see realistically how much work we can do per day, without having to procrastinate and study on the day before the exam. We had to think about the different topics we should study for each day. We thought it was helpful because we felt less overwhelmed at the amount of materials we had to study for each day. This encouraged us to keep going with our studies and to not give up. This also contributes to the Do and Due strategy as well.




Sunday, April 15, 2012

APP Stress Management

Maia- Stress Reduction Plan & Stress Diagram
Jennifer- Stress Reduction Plan & Stress Diagram

We chose to do the Stress Reduction Plan technique because we wanted to see it will help us to recognize that we can control our stress levels by doing the activities listed. When we chose to do one of the following things, like working out in the gym, not only we were reducing stress, we were enjoying the activity. To adapt to this technique, we had to list out every activity according to each category and try them out. We thought it was easy, because we really enjoy doing these activities when stressed out.We realized sometimes we need to reduce our stress from academics by shifting our minds to something else.

We chose to do the Stress Diagram technique because we wanted to prioritize the causes for our stress and identify the issues we needed to address first. To adapt to this technique, we had to list the sources of stress and divide the pie chart into sections that corresponded to the list of sources. It was really helpful to visually where our stress came from, and we were able to know which stress to reduce first by taking an action to fix it. If we did this everyday, we will be able to reduce our stress immensely. We can also reduce stress by doing the ranking the priorities technique as well.

Jennifer's Stress Reduction Plan
Jennifer's Stress Diagram







































































Maia's Stress Reducing Plan

Maia's Stress Diagram

Sunday, April 8, 2012

App #8 Procrastinating



Maia- Excuse Busting & Time Waster- Illustration Class
Jennifer- Excuse Busting & Time Waster- Chemistry and Biology Class

We chose to do the Excuse Busting technique because we wanted to see what types of excuses we made when we procrastinated. This helped me to understand why we were really procrastinating by listing out our excuses and the reason for procrastination. We had to think about the reality of why we said that. I thought it was really easy to list them out, we weren't sure if it was really helpful. Sometimes when you procrastinate, you just can't help procrastinating. So, we thought that other motivation strategies such as hearing encouragement or ranking priorities would help us to not procrastinate.
We chose to do the Time Wasters technique because we tend to waste time when we want to avoid certain tasks. This helped us to list things that wasted my time, and instead see other things we could be doing. We observed that we would waste time usually with socializing and using technology. I thought it was really easy to list them out as well, and it helped us to focus on not using them. It was very helpful because we like to write down things and to see things visually in order to motivate us to stop using them.



Saturday, March 31, 2012

App #7 Motivation

Maia- Motivation Questionare & Academic Fears
Jennifer- Motivation Questionare & Academic Fears- Che 116

We chose to do the Motivation Questionare because we thought it was important to know where our motivation came from. This helped us to understand our motivation from different angles, such as internal and external motivational factors. We had check yes or no for the reasons why we are motivated, and list the external and internal factors of motivation. This was a simple, effective way to check whether we were truly motivated, and why we were really motivated to do our work. It was useful because it reminded us why we should focused in our work, because we want to make ourselves feel proud, and make others feel proud as well.

  


We chose to do Academic Fears because we wanted to analyze the best and the worst outcomes from experiencing our fear, and the types of action necessary to take in order to avoid our fears. This helped us to motivate ourselves to take our action because we were able to list solutions to avoid our fears. We were able to be our own counselors, and ease ourselves from feeling worried about our fears. We told ourselves, even if we face the worst outcome, it's not going to be bad as we think. This was a very easy strategy, and it took only five minutes of thinking.



Friday, March 23, 2012

App #6 Ranking Priority & Memory

Maia- CFS 388 Ranking Priorities & Memory technique
Jennifer- Bio 121  Ranking Priorities & Memory technique

We chose to do ranking priorities because we needed to figure which assignment were most important. Ranking priorities helped us to understand which assignments should be completed first according to the due dates. We had to write down all our to-do's and due dates, and then rank their importance according to the due dates. This was a simple, effective way to prioritize our things due throughout the week. It was useful it was organized and helped us be less stressed.




We used the strategy learned in class for memorizing a group of words. We used this to help us memorize things easier. We had to write down all the list of words and chunked the words that were similar to each other, and personalized it by relating it to our own lives. It was a simple of memorizing a group of words that otherwise we wouldn't have remembered. It was easy because the group of words were unique and odd.


Sunday, March 18, 2012

App #5 Reading

Maia- TART & All Pets R Smart for CFS 388
Jennifer- TART & All Pets R Smart for Bio 123

We used TART for Human Sex and Bio 123 class. It forced us to look over terms before attending the class by reading through our lecture notes and course texts. This strategy was effective in helping us to prepare and to know what topic is going to be covered in the lecture and predicting exam questions. It also helped us to outline how we are to prepare for our lecture, after the lecture and before the test. It's a handy review sheet when we have fritter time in between classes.

Maia's TART note
Jennifer's TART note
We used "All Pets R Smart" for the same subjects again. It allowed us to know and predict what is going to be covered during the lecture. Both of us felt that we wanted to be more prepared before class. It was effective in helping us to know which information may be important for note-taking. It also helped us to summarizing the main topics learned in the lecture. Summarizing made sure that we read through important topics in the course text reading and the lecture.
Maia's All Pets R Smart note

Jennifer's All Pets R Smart Note

Sunday, March 4, 2012

App #4 Notetaking


Maia- Plug in Note & Graphic Organizer for CFS 388
Jennifer- Plug in Note & Graphic Organizer for Bio 121

We used Plug-in notes for Human Sex and Bio 121 class. It forced us to ask questions about each topic outlined in our study guides or syllabus. This strategy was effective in helping us to create our own study guide and for quizzing ourselves. It also helped us to break down different categories of a subject into a question and answer format. When we prepare for exams, we can cover the answer parts, and try to answer the questions.
Jennifer's Plug in Note
Maia's Plug in Note
 We used the graphic organizer for the same subjects again. It allowed us to break down a topic into subcategories. It was effective in helping us to visualize the different categories in a topic, especially since we like to see an organized outline for memorization. Before we used this strategy, our notes had no structure. Now we can use the graphic organizer to study because it’s more organized. We can also compare and contrast the differences between the subcategories.
Jennifer's Graphic Organizer

Maia's Graphic Organizer