How we learn

D - Organizing Information

Humans have been organizing things forever.

Organizing helps us understand.

It help us make associations of new information to old information, which is stored in our long-term memory.

There are many ways of organizing information.

Choose ways that work for you and that make sense in relation to the material you are studying. 

Below are a few ways to organize.

Use some of them or find others that work for you.

Location

If you remember locations well and the information can be sorted by location, use that.  Location can be a geographic location, a place in a building or home, or even a place on one's body.  

Visualize what you need to remember in the location.

Make a picture of it in the location.

Chronological Order

Remember things in the order in which they happened.

This can be in relation to time or other events.

Draw it out on paper.

Problem-Solution

This is a takeoff from the Chronological Order.

This begins with summarizing the situation.

This is followed by writing down as briefly as you can what the problem actually was.

Then you summarize how the problem was solved.

This is followed by how to solution worked.

Alphabet

Organize the information based on the label you use for them.

This can be even turned into a song to help remember them. 

Category

See if the information can be put into categories. 

The categories can be anything that helps you remember.

You can use other memory aids like acronyms to remember the categories.

Chunking

This is usually used to remember numbers.

Think of the chunks of telephone numbers.

3 0 4 5 3 4 7 8 7 8 

304  534  7878

Which is the easiest to remember?

Charting

Creating a chart from the information can be helpful not just in remembering it, but understanding it.

Think of creating the chart to present the information to others.

Then use recitation to teach it.

Mapping

Mind mapping is something that is used a lot now, and it works for many people.

Start with a central topic.

Add main categories.

Branch off from the main categories with important information.