Posts published on February 19, 2016

5 Must-Have Academic Apps for Students

By Melissa Burns

Today it sometimes feels weird how people in general and students in particular managed to lead their everyday lives without the assistance of all the apps that are now accompanying them every minute of their existence. However, no matter how useful they are, their proliferation leads to certain problems – first of them being that there are so many of them it is often hard to choose anything in particular. This article aims to help you out in this respect.

1.    Scribd

For a humble fee of $8.99 a month Scribd gives you access to millions documents, papers and books on all topics and disciplines – effectively, the largest library in the world becomes, quite literally, at hand. This treasure-trove of information can be easily organized and classified according to your needs, and you can create your libraries with all the books, articles, publications and notes you need.

2.    SHAREit

This one is indispensable for students working on projects in groups and may be useful in a number of other situations – for example, when you have certain materials and need to share them with your entire class without sending them individually to each and every one of them. SHAREit will help you do it quickly, easily and comfortably, as it is probably the fastest and certainly the most convenient file-sharing app currently on the market. Although originally an Android app, it has versions for iOS, Windows Phone and Windows PC, so you may be sure nobody is going to be left out.

3.    CliffsNotes

CliffsNotes has been created specifically for students who have to read and analyze a great deal of literature. It contains information on every character, plot arc and underlying theme of a vast number of books, guaranteeing that you will never forget how that particular character was named and what exactly the author meant in this particular fragment.

4.    EasyBib

Perhaps organizing citation pages is not the most challenging and difficult task in academic writing, but it certainly is the most annoying, time-consuming and boring one. You have to gather information on every source you used, write it down in a very specific way (and don’t forget that there are multiple citation formats, each with its own idiosyncrasies) and make sure it is correct up to the last comma. EasyBib takes most of this work off your hands – simply enter the book’s name, and it will provide a citation in the right format.

5.    Self Control

If you absolutely must maintain concentration on your studies for a while but don’t trust yourself not to start playing with your phone and surfing through social networks, then Self Control is for you. Select apps and websites to ban, set the amount of time you are going to be working, and go ahead – Self Control will block all the distractions for the period you’ve specified.

It is true that students face new challenges every day; but it is equally true that modern technology makes them more palatable. We hope these apps are going to help you out.

Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she  is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, information technologies and how these ones may be implemented. – See more at: https://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?p=4955#sthash.Unf28FUO.dpuf

   

– See more at: https://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?p=5066#sthash.18vnRJBv.dpuf