Next time I would......
If was to approach this same module again (without designing and using my cards) i would approach it differently and cut out quite a few things i did which wasted time and were not particularly helpful, however there were a few actions i would repeat but at at different stages in my learning.
1. Look at internet sourced aimed at Design and technology education and even wikkipedia (its ok for getting started) to get an overview of the subject and break down the the word Mechanical systems into area's.
This would tackle the problem I had when i started googling Mechanical systems and received hits from various sites that wasn't relevant. Looking at Bitesize revision and similar sites gave me more of an idea of what to search to for and how I could conduct better research.
2. From these sources create a mind map of some of the main subjects in Mechanical systems. This can be referred to again as i go through the learning and also give me a way of looking at all the key areas in mechanical systems in one place. I found this particularly helpful.
3. Do a concentrated task on a particular area such as gears or pulleys, this will highlight what i have learnt and what i need to learn to finish to the task and prompt further research in the right area. I found my learning accelerated when I used a task (my flash cards) to pull togeather information and give me a reason for research. i knew what areas i was weak in and what i had to find out, otherwise i was just aimless reading throughout lots of websites and not really doing anything with the information. creating the right sort of task was very Important though, for me personally anything with a large amount of aesthetic consideration would have distracted me from the learning. a simple task focused more on the theory, getting the right information down and relating information to the real world was a lot more helpful then making something really pretty or requiring a lot of hand based skills.
4. Repeat step 3 several times for each subject, break it up and not tackle the whole subject in one go like i did with my flash cards. Although making my cards was really helpful i found myself getting a bit bored towards the end and rushing them through, i also didn't get to finish the whole product in time as i kept creating more and more i was going along and still feel there are quite a few cards missing. I think i should have done a few different tasks using a similar method.