The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my tips for successfully navigating a group project or a group paper. So, you’ve been assigned a group project. Fun!  Just kidding —  I hate them.  It’s not that I don’t like other students — I do.  And I feel like you can learn a lot from others if you share your work.   But group projects are objectively terrible — and professors continue to insist that we participate in them and all earn the same grade despite the fact that VERY RARELY is everyone in the group doing the same amount work. Right now, I’m in graduate school for social work, but in my 20s I earned a degree in information systems.  The professors always insisted that group projects were a way to “simulate how groups work in the business world.”   Since at the time I was working IN the business world in many groups, I had a pretty good sense of what that was like, and I rea...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I will give you a quick review on the MarginNote app. A while ago, I was asked by some viewers to compare a couple of apps to GoodReader. One of these was MarginNote.  GoodReader is my primary app for reading and highlighting PDFs and managing PDF files. I use another app, Notability, or for handwritten notes.   After diving into MarginNote, I’ve come to the conclusion that it would not be a good replacement for GoodReader. Instead, it is more of a mind mapping and studying app to help you to understand information from multiple sources.  This video lays down my initial thoughts, but I plan to use the app more, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it after some practice use.  Unfortunately, there’s not a ton of good documentation on how to use MarginNote. You just have to kind of dive in. The developer provides a MarginNote “mind map “as a form of documentation, but the limitatio...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I will do a comparison of two PDF readers — LiquidText and Goodreader. Just so you know a bit about my user profile — I am finishing up a graduate degree in social work and I work primarily on an early version of the iPad Pro.  I have been using Goodreader for some time, but I am pretty open to other apps if they would better suit my needs.  I use GoodReader for two reasons: to read and highlight PDFs and to manage PDF files. I use a different app, Notability, for handwriting/drawing, so I don’t need either of these apps to perform that function for me.  OK – let’s get started on this side by side comparison of GoodReader and LiquidText. First, Price - Goodreader is $6 in the App Store and you can download LiquidText for free.  Liquidtext has a pro version for $30, but most of those extra functions were outside of my basic needs.  I will happily throw down $6 for an app that ma...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my tips for successful distance learning during the Coronavirus outbreak.  These are unprecedented times.  People are sheltering in place, everyone who can is working from home, and college students who normally learn on campus are home on lockdown trying to figure out how to best learn online.  I've been in grad school in a distance learning program for the past couple of years, so I thought I'd share some of my tips on how to make it go as smoothly as possible.  First, let's talk about the differences between  Online vs. Classroom Learning In my experience, with online learning you basically teach yourself by doing the assigned readings or watching the assigned videos and then you use that newly gained knowledge to answer discussion questions either directly to your professor or in an interactive forum like a text-only Blackboard discussion board...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I make photo flashcards with the photo on the front for studying. I am a big fan of memorizing through the use of flashcards.  When I was taking Japanese as an undergraduate, I used to cut up a sheet of 8.5x11 inch paper into 16ths giving me flashcards about this big.  I would write the kanji characters on one side and the pronunciation and English meaning on the other.  I had boxes of these little cards, all bound together in sets with rubber bands.  And I swear they were THE reason that I got good grades in memorization-heavy subjects like Japanese and Biology.   Fast forward to now, thankfully for my current program I need to memorize fewer things, but I still think that flashcards are useful to drill concepts and ideas that I want to have quick brain access to.  Fortunately, there are now a ton of apps that help you to create and ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use Todoist to manage my work in graduate school. I've been using two task management platforms in parallel to manage my work for grad school this semester.  I just did some videos recently on how to use Trello to manage school work in college/university and also high school.  This video is about Todoist.  Apologies in advance if you've already seen the other videos -- there will be a little duplication. Although I really like the versatility and richness of features from Trello, in the end, I've decided to use Todoist based on my requirements and needs.  I've actually started using it for all my task management, but in this video, I'll just talk about managing college work.    I'm in a part-time, partial distance learning program and am taking three classes this semester.  Because of this, my set up will be a little simpler than...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll explain how you can set up Trello to organize your tasks and projects for college or university. I’ve been testing out a bunch of project/task management systems and am currently using two systems in parallel to organize grad school — Trello and Todoist. Both of them are great, but different.  In this video, I'll tell you how I organize school with Trello.   Trello is a great app.  I have a couple of videos on Trello basics and how I use it if you are interested.  As I’ve said in other videos, Trello is incredibly versatile — sometimes it feels SO versatile that you don’t even quite know how to get started.  Which is why is it nice to hear how someone else uses it for a similar purpose so that you don’t have to start from scratch. So, I’m in grad school, for the second time, this time getting a masters in social work.  I’m in a part-time, pa...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I take paperless class notes on my iPad -- even when I'm given paper handouts. I did a video a while ago showing how I take paperless notes when I have been given a digital copy of the PowerPoint slides in advance.  I'm in a hybrid distance learning program, so this happens fairly frequently for me.  However, since then I've been asked a bunch of times how to do it if you are provided with printed handouts of  PowerPoints slides.   Recently, I've done a bunch of full day training, which almost always provide paper handouts, so I've had to figure this out since I don't want to go home with a giant ream of paper that I won't be able to find in two days. Photos of Handout - In Reverse The first thing I do is take photos of each page of the handout.  But for my system to work -- you have to take the photos starting at the END of the hando...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my method of organizing my notes and highlights from the assigned reading for graduate school using Google Sheets. I'm in a grad school program and there is a lot of assigned reading.  Since I now rent my textbooks, marking them all up with highlights and notes isn't really an option.  I suppose I COULD rewrite each passage that I would have highlighted in a notebook or something, but despite the fact that it probably would help my memory retention, it would take FOREVER and seems like busy work.  So, I've taken to renting my textbook digitally when at all possible.  That way I can highlight passages in the digital textbook and then export them, so that I'll have those highlights forever -- even after I return the textbook. So, let me start by telling you how I organize these notes and then I'll go into how I export them.  First, Organizing ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll go through the step-by-step process I use when writing a research paper. Every person is different, but I think there are some basic steps to writing a good research paper -- and it doesn't involve just typing out as many words on a topic that you can possibly think of.  Now, these are fairly generic steps, but I think they would apply the majority of research papers give or take a couple.  If your paper is 8 pages or longer, I would strongly urge you to plan out the steps for your paper at least 4 weeks in advance.  You can watch my video on planning out big projects or research papers.  I'll give you an idea of how long I think most of these steps would take for a 15 page paper and you can adjust accordingly based on your assignment and general research and writing speed.  Here we go: Understand the instructions - read through the instructions for the assi...