Greetings humans!
So, at the end of half term, I thought I'd try something new. Digital planning. That's right, I considered using my phone to plan my schoolwork. Anyhow, long story short, it didn't happen and I carried on using my Filofax anyway. Here are both of my systems and why I ended up failing miserably in this endeavour:
Filofax
If you follow me on Instagram (*ahem* hannahburley *ahem*) you've probably seen these camper van tabs a million times already - as explained here, I have one for each subject and one for my EPQ.
The first page of each tab is a summary of the A2 specification, just so I know how far I have left to progress through the course and for easy reference when playing the "which topic are we going to be taught next" game. (Note: this is not a real game and it should be made apparent at this stage that I don't get out very much).
The next page is where I record all of my homework set with Task, Completed, Date Set and Date Due. (Just realised that I haven't ticked off an essay that was done over two weeks ago - I should probably do that...). Aside from the aforementioned mistake, this keeps me on track and it's useful to see what I have left to do, not to mention I really enjoy ticking tasks off of to-do lists.
Here's the other side of that list and a graph I've drawn where I track my essay marks. The green line is at 90% - as you can see I'm far off of that (and even more so recently) although I'm aiming towards it; if I get a horrible question in the exam then I should still do well enough to get the grades I'd like. Hopefully.
I use the pages in my WO2P diary to record to-dos for the day. I find I work best in small chunks of various subjects, as opposed to focusing on just one or two solidly for a day.
The only deadlines that I record in my diary pages are my EPQ ones; since it's so self-directed, I often forget about them if they're just left in my EPQ section. Here's the deadline for everything but the presentation - the bit I'm looking forward to the most!
Digital
A good three or so years ago, probably around the time I had just started using Filofaxes again for my social (ha) life, I downloaded an app called iStudiez Pro for around £1.99. I decided to revitalise it and put in all my classes for this year, to see whether it would work for me at school.
 |
| A calendar: the coloured dots are for each lesson I have that day. |
 |
| Assignments: where they all appear. As you can see, this experiment went really, really well. |
So, why didn't I use this? Well, here are the reasons:
- Although I'm in sixth form, it's still in a school as opposed to a college, and we're not allowed our phones out in lessons. Therefore, I may end up having to wait around two hours to put an assignment in, since I am the most unsubtle person in the world and would struggle to do so on the sly.
- I'm a creature of habit. Even if I wanted to get my phone out and make a note of my homework, I'd still get my Filofax out without thinking.
- If something is on my phone, it doesn't feel *real*, or like an actual commitment. On the contrary, on paper it feels like some kind of legally binding contract with myself, meaning that I need to get it done.
- Time and effort - it took me about an hour to fill in my timetable on iStudiez Pro. It took me fifteen minutes to make one on Word, print it out and put it in my Filofax. Easy winner.
Which method do you think works best? Paper or pixels?
No comments:
Post a Comment