Best way to use Treehouse as a learning tool?

Hi Anthony,

Did the same thing you did in flying through the courses. I've made a lot of mistakes and it took me a while to find something that works for me.

At one point when taking notes I would write down word for word, pretty much everything said in the video. I thought this would help me remember it, or I'd go back later and read over these folders full of paper. Never happened. It didn't help at all and took a long time to get through each course.

Now what I do is watch a video and write down a few notes while I'm watching. I only write down things I don't already know, and try to keep it brief. When my brain drifts off and I stop paying attention, or I don't understand something, I will rewind a bit or sometimes start the video again. I have a quick look over my notes after every section.

Once I've finished a topic, I'll try to do something with what I've just learned or use it in a future project. For example, I built a simple voting script with AJAX/PHP by starting with the code from the last section of AJAX Basics and combining it with code/concepts covered in some of the PHP courses. I would refer back to the videos as well as looking for help on google and in the docs while building it. It took lots of trial and error, but by struggling I was forced to learn so much more.

I don't always follow this, sometimes I get lazy and move on without practicing it. But the courses and topics that stick in my head the most are the ones that I've practiced on my own.

Be interesting to see what other people do :)