Useful Apps for Education

More and more people are using smartphones, tablets and all sorts of things with –smart prefixes to study. While you can’t go wrong with pen and paper, sometimes a helpful app or two can really assist your learning. We’ve picked out some really helpful apps for education, but we’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

For maximum flexibility, we’ve tried to pick apps that work on Apple and Android devices as well as on the web.

Evernote – Android, Ios, Web, Blackberry.

Evernote is a note taking service. Sounds simple, but its remarkably powerful. You need to register, but a basic account is free and should cover most of your needs. You can create journals that organise specific sections as well as tag individual notes. You can keep typed, handwritten, photo or audio notes and edit them at any time. You can keep notes synced across multiple devices, for example you can quickly type up a note on your phone and review, categorise and revise it on your desktop later.

myHomework – Android, Ios, Windows 8, Web

We’ve mentioned that we’re big fans of keeping track of your studies (link to study tips article) and this app is a tool designed to do just that.  While our online studies don’t set specific homework dates, keeping track of your studies is really important. This app lets you organise your deadlines, set a study schedule and set reminders. Yes, you could do all this with pen and paper, but having them all in one place, together with reminders makes it a very useful tool for organization.

Studyblue – Android, Ios, Web

This is an app that lets you create flashcards online and on your mobile device. You can then review them at a time that suits you later and the results are presented to you. This means that you can check how well you are doing and lets you identify your weak areas. Not everyone likes flashcards, but breaking down your studies into small, digestible chunks can have fantastic results. Put some effort into creating the flashcards and it will pay off.

Studychecker – Android

This app logs your study time and break time, which lets you see how much time you are actually studying and how much of your time is spent on a quick break. You can track this on a daily, weekly or monthly basis so we recommend using this in conjunction with myHomework, so you can keep a log of how your studies are progressing.

Dropbox – Android, Ios, Web

Dropbox isn’t an app that will help you study directly. What it offers is free cloud storage of all of your important documents. Imagine it’s a few weeks before your exams and your computer breaks, taking all of your data with it. It’s something that, if we’re honest, we probably don’t plan enough for. With dropbox, you can store all of your notes and data in the cloud which means they are readily retrievable, sharable and safe. Boring, perhaps, but you’ll be thankful if all goes wrong.

TED Talks – Android, Ios, Web

Another not-strictly -a-study-app entry, TED talks is nonetheless a worthy entry on the list. A free resource of short but entertaining talks on almost every subject you can imagine. Whether you want a fresh perspective, or need to take a quick break from studying, this app can help. With speakers ranging from Bill Clinton to Amanda Palmer to Jamie Oliver, chances are you can find something interesting. Dare we say educational too?

Harvard Reference Generator –  Web

This is a clever little webpage that guides you through how to reference dozens of different formats, including webpages, apps and the usual Journals and Guides. The webpage has some interesting info on cheese too!

What apps do you use? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcoetzee/6773901135/sizes/l/in/photostream/