Study Apps
Studying isn’t as simple as it used to be. Before the dawn of the internet, you had libraries and lecture notes. You would have guest lecturers and encyclopedias. Now many of those resources are available to you free of charge and at a moment’s notice. This increases the standards placed on you and gives you greater opportunities to learn.
Fortunately, you have tools to aid you. People have noticed the needs of students and have developed applications that students can easily use to improve their study skills and habits. You should try to take advantage of them.
Here are some of the best apps to help you study and keep on top of your work:
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Before you venture into the library or the big wide world to get your studying done, you need to know about the potential dangers that you can run into on public networks that you might use. Hackers love to tread on them and intercept personal information to use in identity theft and other cybercrime. Nothing will distract you more from your studies than having someone buy a thousand dollars in clothing online with your credit card.
This is what a VPN protects against. It is a service that will connect you with an offsite secure server using an encrypted connection so that you can hide your IP address and keep cybercriminals and other interested parties away from your internet traffic. Originally developed for business use, consumers are now flooding the market with concerns about their online security.
There are quite a few services out there but there is no doubt you will find one for your system at a cost you can afford. What you will want to do is read some reviews to find the best VPN to keep you safe while you study.
When studying you might find it best to divide the work into separate tasks or to try and regulate yourself so that you won’t cram at the last moment. Todoist is a task management tool that will be useful to those with a lot to do and not a lot of brain space to remember it. Some of the best features are that you can set up recurring tasks and prioritize what you need done. Remembering to study for a weekly quiz will be as simple as making it a daily habit to update and check out this app daily (which is a task you can put on Todoist).
Some might prefer to just keep it in their browser but you can find an app for most platforms. You can even set up email reminders so that each day you get a list of what you need to take care of, whether it is related to studying or not. Try signing up and see if your life gets any more organized.
Evernote is used by professionals of all fields to keep track of their tasks and random thoughts, so why shouldn’t you keep track of your thoughts with it as well? It is clearly the best note-taking app on the market, and its universality and low cost (free for the basic plan) make it perfect for any student with any smartphone. Being able to search through your notes beats turning page after page of a notebook to try and find one small detail.
Other details that you should know about include the ability to take pictures as notes and take recordings as notes as well. It’s perfect for when your mouth can move faster than your hands and you want to get every idea out there. It is certainly worth it to give it a try, as you can always delete it if you find it a burden instead of a help.
Most students have heard of TED Talks, which are a great way to expand your mind with a range of presentations ranging on topic from poetry to artificial intelligence. Yet there is an app available to people so that they can access that information anywhere. It makes for a great bus or pre-class companion, and many of the talks aren’t so long as you couldn’t finish them while waiting on someone else.
The app is readily available and functions well. It has great reviews as a general rule, and you don’t have to pay for it (much like the talks themselves). Try looking first at topics in your general field and branch out from there, you’d be surprised at what you’d find.
In addition to those mentioned above there are certainly plenty of other apps available that would help students immensely. Have you encountered any yourself that are noteworthy? Make a search yourself and find some that are refined to your particular tastes. The investment of your time will be worth it!
About the Author
Isa Cox is always a scholar, but she is also a blogger who like to focus on technological issues and internet security. She always keeps an eye out for the next new apps that will give her an advantage in making herself the best she can be. Isa blogs for securethoughts.com, a leading technology security information portal.
