information organisation techniques for rote learning / study

[blashrkh]

How do others organise their information for rote learning and study?

This is a very broad question in an attempt to learn new and better ways to organise and summarise information in preparation for rote learning of technical information. Any ideas are welcome.

Looking to summarise the taxonomy of a bunch of viruses, lifecycles, diseases and symptomatology . This would of course involve the construction of a phylogenetic tree (of sorts) with detailed notes to the sides of nodes. Any flash card mechanism or memory / memorisation techniques would be useful. There is a lot of information so am looking for extensibility.

So rather than print out notes I am thinking it may be wiser to work from an “information map”, in the form of a mind map, with easy scalability (size adjustment) of objects and text preferably whilst still being searchable.

Some starter information points are:

• whether LibreOffice is suitable for such a task and suggestions on how to achieve this.
• any other software others may use for this purpose. No online apps please.
• how do you/others organise large sets of information for rote learning and academic study?
• example document or image to show concept

[ajlittoz]

@Hrbrgr: I reopened the question because I don’t think it is off-topic. It deals with some ways of using Writer, though unusual but possible.

[Hrbrgr]

@ajlittoz, es steht dir natürlich frei anderer Meinung zu sein. Viel Erfolg.

[Jedimaster]

LibreOffice is an Office Suite, you know Word Processor,Spreadsheet, things similar to what MS Office can do. I don’t think it is suitable for what you want to do but someone else on this site might have suggestions on what is suitable.
If this helps then please tick the answer () …and/or show you like it with an uptick (∧)

[ajlittoz]

As you point out, I think LO is not the best tool for such mind-mapping note taking.

You can use Calc in a limited way:

• one row per topic/subject
• in each row, a cell for the title and subsequent celss for sub-topic, sub-sub-topic, … and notes

Note that you can enter several lines in a cell with Ctrl+Enter to go to next line within the cell.

With Calc, you can sort under various criteria but it is not very easy to enter formatted text.

With Writer, I would use the Heading n hierarchy (after customising the paragraph styles so that they don’t display too big). Also, I wouldn’t enable “chapter numbering”. Heading n styles allow you to “structure” your notes.

Use the Navigator (in the side pane) to reorganise your level-x paragraphs. The Navigator can move a Heading n paragraphs and all its subordinates Heading m (m > n) as a whole. You can also promote/demote paragraphs (easily change their level).

Have a try and see how it fits in your goal.