Sequence of literature notes on 4x6 cards

Jackhansonc

Hi, everyone. I've been using a hybrid ZK system as my fleeting notes are on my notebook daily journals, reference notes on 4x6 cards, and main notes in Obsidian.

For the past few months, I've taken a lot of reference notes on 4x6 cards ranging from Coursera courses, academic journals to books and even my own daily journal.

After converting them into main notes for 3 weeks, I now have a question, which is hilarious but did bother me a lot. The question is how should I sequence my reference note cards for a course or a book because I might have notes on two cards for 2 chapters or for a combination of different lesson videos.

I watch some YouTube videos, but it looks like no one have talked about sequencing of reference note cards?

ctietze

Can you come up with an illustrative example so we all have something concrete to discuss?

Jackhansonc

@ctietze said:
Can you come up with an illustrative example so we all have something concrete to discuss?

Hi, ctietze, thank you for your advice.

Here's an example.

I take notes from Coursera Arizona University TESOL course.

Now, module 1 of the course has 4 lessons, each lesson comes with video, reading, quiz and bonus materials.

So at first, I try to create one card for one reading/video/quiz, and thus I can give each card a title following the video/reading/quiz title, but I find by doing that, I could potentially waste so many space on a card.

However, if I fill one card with notes from, let's say, 1 video and 1 reading, then I have no idea how to retrieve its information later, because I do not know what the card is about when it's placed in a box. It also makes me confused on where to put this card in a number of similar cards.

ctietze

With that concrete example, I would say that the trouble stems from re-creating the course structure in your notes. What for?

I quickly searched for "Coursera Arizona University TESOL course", sounds like an English teacher certification. So potentially interesting ideas (that I totally made up!) that could go into my Zettelkasten would be e.g.

• something about the use of "capstone projects" in teaching (a note about the course curriculum that could transfer to giving courses myself)
• how to gauge and grade English reading proficiency levels
• requirements to become an English language teacher

Taking the course is just a means to acquire knowledge that's quizzed in the certification process. The course itself as a topic to create notes for doesn't sound like something interesting at all -- unless you're a historian of TESOL courses and need to meticulously analyze the course curriculum, maybe