Notes on What Smart Students Know

* Smart students not only get higher grades than their classmates, they also learn more, in less time, and get more satisfaction out of the process.

* No one bothered to teach you the most important academic skill: how to learn

* It doesn’t matter whether you’re getting straight As or struggling to get Cs; you misconceptions about school and the learning process are probably making school a lot tougher than it has to be.

* Other books assume that if you’re not doing as well in school as you’d like, something is wrong with you. I start from the premise that some is wrong with school.

* Anyone can be a smart student. The basic blueprint for academic success- Cyberlearning

* I am not against schools, and I am not against teachers. I am for you- the student. I am adamantly against anything that interferes with your developing genuine understanding and an independent, questioning, self-confident state of mind.

* Although school might be the problem, you are the solution. I wrote this book to change the way you see school, to change the way you see the world, and to change the way you see yourself.

* It urges you to rebel against those who attempt to spoon-feed you an education and force you to learn their way.

* “You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” GALILEO

* Smart students have different skills, goals, habits, priorities, and strategies because they see school, the learning process, and even themselves differently.

* Smart students use completely different student and learning methods because they see things in a completely different way. They have a completely different attitude.

* Smart students know that you can teach yourself far better than any school possibly can. You must change the way you see yourself.

* Forget passively accepting what the education system has to offer: being a smart student means taking charge and teaching yourself. Being a smart student means taking responsibility for your education. No school can teach you the way you learn best, so how much you learn and how well you do is up to you.

* The Student Quiz (use Boomerang)

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THE PRINCIPLES

Principle 1: Nobody can teach you as well as you can teach yourself.

Principle 2: Merely listening to your teachers and completing their assignments is never enough.

Principle 3: Not everything you are assigned to read or asked to do is equally important.

Principle 4: Grades are just subjective opinions.

Principle 5: Making mistakes (and occasionally looking foolish) is the price you pay for learning and improving.

Principle 6: The point of a question is to get you to think- not simply to answer it.

Principle 7: You’re in school to learn to think for yourself, not to repeat what your textbooks and teachers tell you.

Principle 8: Subjects do not always seem interesting and relevant, but being actively engaged in learn them is better than being passively bored and not learning them.

Principle 9: Few things are as potentiall difficult, frustrating, or frightening as genuine learning, yet nothing is so rewarding and empowering.

Principle 10: How well you do in school reflects your attitude and your method, not your ability.

Principle11: If you’re doing it for the grades or the approval of others, you’re missing the satisfactions of the process and putting your self-esteem at the mercy of things outside of your control.

Principle 12: School is a game, but it’s a very important game.

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“I never let schooling interfere with my education.” Mark Twain

Learning the Old Way

1. It’s passive. …you may feel busy “studying” but you’re not really doing anything; that is you are not doing any thinking…as active as watching television.
2. It’s boring.
3. It’s ineffective. Reading and rereading ignores the way your mind works.
4. It’s not practicing anything important.

The challenge is finding a learning process that pus you in control of the process, keeps you interested and engaged in the material you’re studying, and produces genuine understanding!

Cyberlearning

* “cyber” Greek “to pilot” or “be in control”

* Cyberlearning is the process of asking a specific cycle of questions of the material you are studying. By organizing and reorganizing the information and by making connections between the new material and what you already know, you bild genuine understanding.

* Knowing what questions to ask is much more important than merely knowing “the answers”.

* Internal dialogue.

Cyberlearning: The Twelve Questions

What is my purpose for reading this?

What do I already know about this topic?

What’s the big picture here?

What’s the author going to say next?

What are the “expert” questions?

What questions does this information raise for me?

What information is important here?

How can I paraphrase and summarize this information?

How can I organize this information?

How can I picture this information?

What’s my hook for remembering this information?

How does this information fit in with what I already know?

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* In most classrooms, teachers ask the questions and students look for the answers. But asking the right questions is usually the hard part- the part that makes you think the most about your learning. Smart students’ learning is self-guided. They ask their own questions.