First we had the iPod and it caused a cultural revolution – those white ear buds sold it more than anything else. Apple was quick off the mark to follow with the iPhone which again caused waves in the cell phone market because of its capabilities and mass appeal. Finally Apple has made the vision of Arthur C. Clark come to fruition with the advent of the iPad – a personal handheld computer with a touch screen interface. Apple doesn’t just enter into a market – it creates the market in the first place.
And the iPad has found a special place in the hearts of students all over the world. Why? First off the form factor of it means they’re not having to lug around heavy laptops all the time when they need just basic note taking and web browsing functions. And of course there’s the coolness factor that comes with an iPad – if you don’t have one then you definitely want one. It’s really that simple.
But are there any apps that can really and truly benefit students in their studies and in their scholastic and personal lives?
Image Credit: Cristiano Betta
Well the 10,000,000+ iPad owners seem to think so and this is the list we sent to the students at the MA in political science program I work for.
This award-winning app is the best possible way to schedule all of your classes, all your assignments, labs and homework all in one easy-to-use interface. So each day you know exactly what’s ahead of you in school or college and you have future reminders for any work that’s due in. Last but not least you can backup all your schedules to an e-mail account with the push of a button.
Looking for a specific textbook at a specific price? That’s where BigWords comes in allowing you to search the BigWords price comparison database for the best prices on the books you need for your course. Basically you can make sure you’re getting the best possible deal when buying textbooks.
How would you like to get access to over 100,000 periodicals and books and read them directly on your iPhone? It’s like having your own personal, portable library that you can access 24/7/365. One million other iPad users think it’s a useful app.
You’ll never have to remember conversion ratios ever again – this neat little app does all the work for you. The simple interface allows you to convert units of anything to anything else you want plus it has its own calculator function built in so you don’t need to launch the iPad calculator app separately.
Put more than 350,000 words and phrases at your disposal with this “must have” iPad app. For your money you also get 60,000 audio pronunciations but you will need a Wi-Fi connection for this to work. Almost $30 might seem expensive but remember that the standard New Oxford American Dictionary costs around $60 for the paper version.
Anything you can think of taking a note of – text, pictures or even voice notes can all be handled by Evernote. Then all this information can be synced to a central account so you never lose track of anything you’ve taken a note of. Very easy-to-use and you’ll be amazed at how often you use it.
Mind mapping tools aren’t something that are popular with a lot of students because they’re seen as being hard work but SimpleMind allows you to get your head around using mind mapping for when you need to brainstorm out an idea or project. Once you get used to using mind maps you’ll never want to use anything else to plan your projects.
Now you have 7 incredible apps that you can use during the coming academic year to up your scholastic game and make the most of your study time. The more efficiently you study the more personal time you’ll have as a result.
This guest post is by Lior Levin, who is a student, a blogger and an online consultant to a task management tool company and few others.
