Clever

Doing the IB is an excellent preparation for university. It teaches you to think critically and conceptually and you will acquire excellent research and evaluation skills.

In these two years, you will work hard and you'll have to be very organised. By adopting the most efficient work habits, you can make large improvements very quickly. Remember that the notion of 'Intelligence' is broadly defined and intelligence itself is not fixed. You can train your brain. You acquire skills by practice and with the right mindset, you can become really adept at activities and skills which you may previously not have been as good at.

How do you become a smarter learner then? By constantly reflecting on your own learning strategies and testing if they are working. I will be introducing many different strategies to you, and you should evaluate which ones work best for your brain.

A paper published in 'Psychological Science in the Public Interest' has investigated ten strategies for improving learning, ranging from mnemonics to highlighting and came to some surprising conclusions:

http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/assessing-the-evidence-for-the-one-thing-you-never-get-taught-in-school-how-to-learn

Here are the key points. Note how high lighting and re-reading rank very low:

How does learning something new actually work?

Which one are you?

Mindset is everything in life. Click on this image and see if you use any of these elements in your thinking.

Be tech savvy: sites to try, explore or bookmark

Part of being a good learner is using good tools. Pen and paper is important in the IB because your final exam is written with these conventional tools, but using online tools to organise your information is definitely good practice. It will come in handy at uni too. The IB is a two year course so you will generate an enourmous amount of information, paper, notes, handouts, links etc etc.
How will you manage that?

• Google Docs, a must.
• Diigo, online bookmarking and highlighting. Here's mine, but you should get your own.
• Evernote, clip everything to the cloud.
• Experiment: Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ibhistoryvw
• This classblog, bookmark it. 

Who would like to test out this shared Evernote Folder? https://www.evernote.com/pub/vanweringh/ibhistoryia