When I think about my perfect resource, the first thing I need to consider is how I study and how I learn. When it comes to learning, personally I am a very visual, aural, kinaesthetic learner, so simply reading and making notes certainly won’t cut it for me.

Now obviously the best form of delivering literature is still in the form of print and eBooks, however in order to really utilise the information we have been given we can go much further beyond plain texts to engage with the reading. With geography being an ever-changing subject, many of our readings centre around articles, and on the odd occasion we may have to refer to a textbook.

Before we even begin getting started on my perfect resource, something every textbook NEEDS to have are Chapter Summaries. If you’ve ever been assigned a reading that is 30 pages long you will know what I mean. We have all had that moment where you’ve done a whole section of reading and got to the end and thought, “what did I just read?” and that thought of having to read it again makes you want to quit the day and go back to bed. (Queue emotional music) With just a few short bullet points at the end of a chapter, thousands more students could make it through the day without mental numbness. Anyway for more on textbooks check out Aly’s Post on her perfect resource, as much of our feelings are the same.

 

With Critical thinking by Tom Chatfield  already being the template for one of my favourite print resources ever, I shall outline here My Ideal Digital Resource. Having to use so many different articles and readings can very quickly become a tiresome overload. Sifting back and forth through 20+ tabs of articles on my iPad often leaves me wishing there was something to keep all my notes and papers in one place. In my opinion PDF files are pretty annoying, yes you can highlight them, but they don’t save, and you also cannot annotate them, which leaves me with stacks of notes that can easily get muddled up. Having a resource that both allow me to have all my readings in one place and my annotations linked to them would honestly be a lifesaver.

When it comes to eBooks their system is rather effective, although there is nowhere to make annotations, the navigation of most of them is rather straight forward, they also have a functioning highlighter that certainly comes in handy. From time to time I will also use online videos in order help me better understand a concept, my perfect resource would also allow me to make notes in the same space to keep them all together so I can keep all of my notes properly organised.

Andre