Capturing what you’ve learned/taking notes

This is a very good point. I had this issue with codecademy too. What I would really like for starters is to have a space in all courses and tracks where you can make notes. If you hear something new in a video for example that you think you should remember, you can think, "ah I'll put an example of this here" which could be a design note or a code fragment.

I'm not sure what Rails Development is yet (I think it has something to do with Ruby) but one of the things I've done to help me learn is to put offline documents together with examples of code I call "primers" where I not examples of code and important notes on code practices.

I probably should write more notes down on paper as I go through but that#s another thing to do .

Perhaps also try looking at the video transcripts so you can note take or even copy some of the notes having seen the video so you can put them in context.

There's a few ideas to get going with. :-)

Everybody learns in a different way, whether that be by observing (like watching video's), following along or reading material. Even a mixture of all of these styles. So it's about finding what is best for you.

I can however give you some advise on learning Rails as this is what I am doing now, so here goes. Firstly ensure when you start the Social media Rails courses that you use Rails 3.2 as the latest version (4.0.3) have slightly different ways of doing things and you will end up pulling your hair out like I did :). But before even attempting the videos on Rails on this site I HIGHLY recommend (and I can't stress this enough) that you first read this free written tutorial (It has been written for Rails 3.2 and 4, just choose the version on the right hand side) I would choose version 4 here. The reasons for this are as follows, the videos on here seem to be fast paced and presume some knowledge of Rails, they will rush over topics and not clear on what everything is doing (I am by no means slating Treehouse, I understand the videos would be insanely long if they went into every detail), whereas the link I posted will describe everything that you are doing and why you are doing them. I would first read through to at least chapter 6 without following along and then you will get a feel for the language (Chapter 4 covers Ruby too) then start over and follow along with it. I wish I had found it when I first tried to learn Rails as I gave up for a while and now I am back with a vengeance. I wish you good luck with this and do hope you take my advice as it will give you more of an understanding of Rails for when you come back to the videos on here and are able to work at a faster pace. You can contact me @Sacki2013 (twitter) for any advice while learning and I will try and assist you.

As for the way I learnt HTML/CSS, I did all the videos on here then I researched the lot on the W3.org and created my own cheatsheet for what everything does, needless to say once I completed the cheatsheet I no longer needed it, as it turns out I learn by reading and then writing it out myself, so copying basically enables me to retain that knowledge. I would also recommend a youtube search for "Music for studying" and have this on while reading as it will keep you focus and calm.

I have other tips for you as you progress but that should be enough to get you started for now.

Adam :)

S i use a program called CodeBox to keep my notes and code snippets in. Each time I learn something new I add it to CodeBox for future reference.

It is time consuming to take notes for sure. I'm coming into Treehouse with no prior knowledge so for me, note taking is a must. My biggest resource outside of notes are site like W3 schools among other sites for syntax reference.

Typically, I watch the videos first without taking any notes so I don't lose the context of the lesson. Then I go back and write down the most important things. I have a 100 page doc from Deep Dive CSS alone. I'm going to post it on the forums once I edit it. I figure it would save some other from having to take notes.