For several years now, colleges and universities have posted for free academic courses via iTunes podcasts. But now in iTunes U, Apple is expanding the service by providing access to complete courses from leading universities and other schools.

For now the courses are completely free–requiring only your time to work through the lectures and assignments.

iTunes App

The iTunes U app can be used on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. When you subscribe to a coure all the core material for the course will be automatically downloaded to the app on your device.

Links to supplemental material will also be provided for download from the App Store, the iBookstore, and the iTunes Music Store. While the supplemental material may come at a cost, most of the video lectures and PDF document handouts seem to be available for free.

The beauty of iTunes U is how it packages core material into one application. A downloaded course typically includes a brief overview, a detailed course outline of lectures and assignments, a built-in Notepad, and links to course materials. The interface and setup is similar to how you might organize an analog three-ring binder.

Though courses are best viewed on the iPad, you can sync your notes and course information between your iOS devices. Unfortunately, however, Apple has not created a Mac client for iTunes U. Nor has it done so for its iBooks 2 textbook reader.

You can access and view all the courses in iTunes U either through the iTunes U application itself, or in iTunes on your Mac or PC. iTunes U already includes several dozen courses on a wide range of topics—from Basics of Culinary, Beginners Chinese, Masters of Photography, to Stanford University’s highly rated iPad and iPhone App Development course.

Standford CS193p

The Stanford apps development course, for example, includes 19 actual live lectures, slide show presentations, in course assignments.

Even better, the course doesn’t require you to purchase any additional supplemental material. And if you’re running OS X Lion you can download Apple’s app developers application Xcode for free from the App Store. All that is required on your part for this course is your time.

Copyright Course

Another interesting though lightweight course, titled Rights, Remixes, and Respect, is a five part series about the differences between creative inspiration, appropriation, copyright and fair use.

Kirby Ferguson, the developer for this course, provides short definitions of copyright related terms, and then presents excellent song and movie examples about sampling and remixing and creative productions. His video presentations are are linked to a website which means you don’t have to download those files to your device.

You can work through the course in less than a week, and it even ends with a couple of short quiz reviews. The course also requires a few paid download of songs from the iTunes Music Store.

Notepad

Another useful and practical tool in the iTunes U app is a built-in notepad. If you want to do pretty much all your work within your mobile device, this notepad will come in quite handy. It works similarly to to the default Notepad app in Apple’s mobile devices.

While iTunes U will never be as popular as the iTunes Music Store or the App Store, it’s a great opportunity and resource for self-motivated learning. And because courses are free, you learn as much as you like without taking out a student loan.

Let us know what you think of iTunes U.

Online dictionaries aren’t only about words and their meanings. They also bring in other cool features which make for a fun learning experience for both children and adults alike.

Dictionary.com and its resources make it almost a portal that takes you on a journey of word discoveries. Word has it that it is probably the most frequented of online dictionary and reference sources on the web. Why not – after all you can do much more than merely look up a word here. Try these 8 for starters.

The Hot Word

Words are never one-dimensional. There’s always an interesting story behind them or you can create an interesting one around a word. The Hot Word shows just how interesting the English language is. The blog not only dives into the origins of words, but also discusses their present context. Even a casual read through the blog gives you interesting tidbits like the language that’s only spoken in one tiny part of Portugal.

Words!

This is a weekly compilation that picks up interesting definitions from areas of medicine, gardening, cooking, and more. Browsing through them takes you to entire word lists and in turn to their meanings. The compilation perks up interest because you might thing that you know all about a specific area, but the word list tells you that you still have some learning to do. Dictionary.com comes with comprehensive listings on medical terms, abbreviations, cultural words, idioms etc.

Solve a Daily Crossword

I can’t get to the Times crossword or solve it, but I do try my word associations and recall with the Daily Crossword here. You can time yourself, pause and save your progress, and even print the puzzles though it’s much better to solve them online. The game also gives you letter and word hints if you are stuck at a square.

By the way, if you are attempting to solve the Times crossword, you can take the help of the Crossword Solver here at Dictionary.com. Just a helpful tool to bookmark if you are into crosswords.

Fun ‘n Free Games!

The fun doesn’t end at crosswords but continues with the cool word based puzzles and games in the Games section. Making words starting with a provided letter sounds lame, but some interesting rules make the game a bit more challenging. There are more ‘complicated’ games like Word Kingdom which is like playing Age of Empires with words. Word Games has a lineup of nice games that should set up someone who is trying to get better with English.

Become a Word Millionaire with Word Dynamo

Word Dynamo is a beta feature but it already looks useful as an educational tool. Word Dynamo is about learning words in an engaging way. Word challenges are arranged according to grade levels and topics. You have to progress up by unlocking the levels as in any game. Quizzes, word lists, and word games make up Word Dynamo. You can also learn a bit about French, Spanish and Latin.

Which Word Is The World Searching For Today?

A small section that is tucked away near the foot of the homepage shows what the world is searching for on Dictionary.com. Capturing trending words from the whole web would be too much to ask for, so let’s do with what the nearly 50 million visitors landing here are making popular each day. You can look at Popular Searches, Words in the News, and Where Is It.

Rave on Quotes

There are many places you can go in your search for quotable quotes. Dictionary.com happens to be one more. There’s the Quote of The Day right on the homepage and more quotes beyond that. You can cite the quotes or choose to embed them in your blog.

Simply Translate

Last but not the least; Dictionary.com includes a very handy translation engine that can handle 50 languages. The translation is limited to 100 characters, but that should suffice for short bursts. One limitation is that the translator does not detect the language when you insert it into the field.

Dictionary.com goes beyond being a simple online dictionary. What sets it apart are these add-on learning features which make this a complete ‘word portal’. Which is your favorite online dictionary? If it’s this one, tell us what appeals to you here when you come looking for some meaning.

We’ve shown you Ubuntu chemistry applications for students, but we somehow missed this extremely simple and information-crammed version of the periodic table. That’s too bad. There is a lot of information to be found in gElemental, and it’s very logically arranged. There’s a reason it’s so highly rated in the Ubuntu Software Center, and I think it’s more than a competent replacement for a mere poster.

Whether you’re a student or just a science enthusiast, this is an application worth having around for offline reference. If you’re a real nerd, you can just explore it for fun in your spare time. Science is fun.

Using gElemental

If you’ve seen the periodic table of the elements before, the main screen of gElemental will be familiar to you. You’ll see the elements, all in their proper places.

Hover over an element and you’ll see its name, the series it belongs in and its atomic number at the top. By default elements are color-coded according to series; you can find a legend by clicking the drop-down menu at the bottom of the window. You can change this color code in the menu to any of dozens of factors, which is certainly something a poster can’t do.

It’s a simple interface but what else do you want? If what you want are details about the various elements I highly recommend clicking one of them.

You’ll find a variety of information right away, from basic chemical stats to the year and place it was discovered. Click the “Physical or Atomic” tab in this window and you’ll see even more information:

Under physical, you’ll find the melting and boiling points, the heat of fusion and vaporization and more. The atomic tab contains even more information. Rest assured, there’s more data here than most posters you’ve seen.

Are you wondering where this information is all coming from? There’s a complete list of sources which you can find in the menu.

You’re free to look through this and decide how trustworthy the information is, which is particularly nice if you need to cite something you find in this program.

Installing gElemental

Are you ready to install this program? Search your Linux distro’s repository for “gelemental” and you’ll have it in no time. Are you a Ubuntu user? Then simply click here to install gElemental, thanks to the magic of the Ubuntu Software Center.

If you can’t find gElemental in your repositories, head over to the gElemental homepage, where you’ll finds the source code to compile it yourself.

Conclusion

I love simple applications that do one thing very well. So far as I can tell, this program is a great way to quickly pull up information about the periodic table of the elements. Do you agree? As always, leave your thoughts in the comments below along with any alternative applications for the job.

We’re not talking about merely podcasts and videos. The courses on iTunes U include everything, and that means handouts, exams, answers and much more material in the form of PDF files you can download for free. The app offers courses on numerous different topics, which come from big places like Harvard and Cambridge, or small ones like community colleges, and even includes K-12 courses.

The main screen of the app looks very much like iBooks, and displays the courses you’ve subscribed to on the familiar wooden shelf. You can browse the iTunes U catalog by institute, browse new courses, or search for your favorite topics. When you subscribe for a course, iTunes U downloads all the core material, and informs you that supplemental material may be purchased from the iTunes Store, App Store or iBookstore.

This venture of Apple’s goes hand in hand with their new iBooks textbooks, and is aimed at both educators, who can design entire courses and make them available through the app, and for students, who can easily access course material and sync it between their different devices.

What do you think of iTunes U? Are you planning to use it?

Source: TUAW

There are many ways to look at and browse through Wikipedia. From browser extensions and plugins to web apps that make browsing Wikipedia more than a scholarly exercise. The vast bank of human knowledge stored within Wikipedia pages also makes for some interesting uses – some which you might not even consider seriously. But checking out these five useful ways of using Wikipedia could be worth your reading time.

Search Wikipedia for “Experts”

It is safe to assume that Wikipedia contributors or Wikipedians know what they are talking, or rather writing about. You can pick any topic and search for a “subject matter expert” you can contact. Let’s say I am searching some information on ‘Arteriolosclerosis’. Clicking on the View History link takes you to the page where revisions from Wikipedians who contributed to the page are listed. Click on the user name to learn more about the contributor, and then click on Talk to leave him a message.

But remember that Wikipedia should be just a starting place for your research and not the end point. The Golden Rule still applies: Don’t believe everything you read on the web. If you are looking for sensitive information, especially related to health and medicine, Wikipedia “facts’ should be corroborated by professional opinion and hard facts.

Get the Bigger Picture with Wikipedia Statistics

As the page itself says, it’s almost impossible for a human to grab all of Wikipedia. So, the statistics page was conjured up to give a bird’s eye view of what’s happening within the boiler rooms of this online encyclopedia. For instance, Wikitrends tells you at a glance what’s trending on Wikipedia. Uptrends and downtrends are available across languages and time spans. Reading the top stories could help you connect the dots as to why the stories are gaining popularity.

Wikipedia as a Foreign Language Dictionary

I came across this old article (dated 2009) which explains how you can use Wikipedia for language translations. You can take advantage of the Wikipedia language sidebar to go to the foreign language specific page and get the equivalent word or term. Of course, it might be a synonym and not an exact translation, but even then Wikipedia and its multi-lingual versions offer an offbeat language learning tool.

Wikipedia as a Time Capsule

Did you know that Wikipedia has a Timeline of the far future? This timeline among all the other timelines that are listed in Wikipedia covers events from just about eight thousand years from now to the farthest edges of future time. It is based on scientific predictions, astrophysics, and plate-tectonics among other things. The List of Centuries breaks down each millennia and century (from 4rth Century BC to 40^th Century AD), into its major events – social, political, and technological. You can literally track time using the vast storehouse of information on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia for A Few Laughs

Everything’s not serious about Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a page devoted to deleted articles with freaky titles; because, as the page so eloquently puts it – Wikipedians too loose their minds occasionally. It’s a real pity that the articles stand deleted and only the titles remain. Topics like “Butt munchers” and “Dog Fart Neutralizing Thong” would have made for an interesting read.

In some quarters, Wikipedia may not be taken as a credible source. But as a jumping off point for further exploration, it more than serves its purpose. We have taken a close look at Wikipedia over the years. Have we missed some tip, some unique way to use Wikipedia more effectively? Give us your take if you use it in an interesting way.

I personally hate installing extra toolbars in my browser, and not only because they take up screen real estate. But the potential usefulness of Citelighter piqued my interest enough to overcome my reluctance. Citelighter is not merely for students, because with its information gathering features, it could be handy across the board for bloggers, writers, office workers, even stay-at-home moms.

How does a citation tool help us?

Citation is defined as a short note recognizing a source of information or of a quoted text. You can call it a reference. If you are still confused, just open up a Wikipedia entry and head below to the section called References. A citation also similarly acknowledges previously published works and in case of the web, links to it. There are various styles for publishing citations in research papers and on the web. But we will not go into that. For us, it’s more useful to learn what we can do with a citation and research tool like Citelighter.

• Citation is the best way to avoid charges of plagiarism or copying.
• Information is reusable. Crediting the source of the original information helps everyone because a reader can go back to the source and dive deeper into the material.
• Citations help to respect intellectual property rights of the person who created the source text in the first place

Organizing information with Citelighter

Citelighter is described as a fully automated bibliography, citation, research, and internet highlighting tool. It works as a Firefox plug-in. Citation is in public beta now, but is gradually progressing towards maturity as a full-fledged academic research tool.

Let’s see how it automates the whole process of collating information and preparing a research paper (or any paper).

1. To get started, register with an email account or Facebook Connect. Next, you have to download the Firefox plug-in which shows up as a toolbar after you restart the browser. The screenshot in the next point gives you an idea of how it looks after an install on Firefox.

2. Start a project. You can also set a due date for project completion and set reminders. The next steps are pretty simple.

3. Surf the web and start collecting information from webpages. Citelighter does not yet work on PDF files, but with webpages it’s a smooth flow.

4. Highlight all relevant information with the mouse by selecting the text as you would with a highlighter pen and clicking the Capture button.

A small sub-toolbar drops down and gives you an option to edit the capture or add extra comments. Citelighter automatically captures the information, but as you can see in the edit box below, you can fine-tune your capture by adding a lot of citation worthy info.

5. As you keep collecting the info, you can press the View button anytime to see all that you’ve saved. It’s arranged in points. The View window is where most of the information organization takes place. You can drag & drop to reorder all the data you have collected. You can click on Comments and type in more information required for your paper or notes.

6. Scroll down and you see all the bibliographic information neatly recorded as per the order you collected the information. You can customize it according to the three styles presently on offer right now – APA, MLA, and Chicago.

7. Once you’ve completed your research, press the Export button to send all the organized data (or selected ones) to a MS Word document, Google Docs, email, or printer.

8. The My Projects page (accessed from home icon on the toolbar) lists all your projects. You can use the search bar to search for specific text stings within all your projects listed here.

Footnotes…

Citelighter is a quick research tool to collect and organize your research notes. It works well on webpages, but it’s still not tuned for PDFs. That may go against it, but these are still early stages and the project is evolving. It just might be the premium feature when the developers start offering it in paid and free flavors. Browser extensions for Chrome and Safari are also in the offing. Citelighter is also putting a points system in place for more community participation.

When it comes to citation and bibliography tools, I like Citelighter for its speed and ease of use. What about you? Which research tool would you recommend?

Brainstorming your ideas visually helps with clarity and allows you to connect ideas and interlink them together. That’s where mindmapping took off. You might know zilch about it, but even age old habits of doodling your ideas is better than a blank page. But you don’t have to draw aimlessly because MS Word offers you a few free templates to structure your ideas and sharpen your thought process.

Let’s fire up MS Word and take a look at 8 free Office.com templates that help you generate ideas with Microsoft Word. You can use the search field to get to the template if you have a specific term; you can drill down the categories; or you can follow the links below.

Story Map Templates

The Story Map template looks suitable for writers who are trying to outline a plot. Alternatively, it can be used by students, as intended to plan out a narrative. But it can also be used to plan out a team role-play for a given situation when you are trying to connect a solution to the underlying problem by assigning specific roles to team members.

Process Chart

This is a very simple step-by-step chart that can be used to describe the flow of a process. You can use the process chart to break down a complex event into a sequence of smaller action steps.

Event Map

I have tried using this Word template while plotting the idea for a short story – and it worked. Along with the Story Map template, the Event Map can be a useful tool for beginner writers.

Spider Map

The Spider Map is a little like a conventional mind map. The large central circle represents your main idea, and the branching linear lines can be used to jot down the subsidiary ones. The description says that you can use the spider map to investigate various aspects of a single topic or just to organize their thoughts about a subject.

Umbrella Chart

To be frank, I haven’t figured out a way to use this MS Word template effectively yet, so I have yet to find out how versatile this graphic organizer is. The description says that you can arrange the details of any subject or topic using this visual aid. What I have learnt is that the umbrella chart can be used to represent a core idea and the subordinate ideas around the spokes.

KWL Chart

Using this simple columnar template, you can easily track what someone (or you) knows (K), wants to know (W), and has learned (L) about a subject. It’s a very handy aid for studying and also if you are trying to research something. Wikipedia has a more detailed explanation on its use, and as it says the KWL template can be used to reduce repetition by leaving out prior knowledge and focusing on the W (wants to know). Based on this, students can concentrate on what exactly they want to learn or how and where they want to learn it from.

T-Chart

Every issue has two sides and this template helps you to examine both sides of the same coin. The T-chart is a graphic organizer that can be used to look at different viewpoints and broaden your view on an issue. Anything that can be broken down into two opposing views can be stated using the T-chart.

Fishbone Diagram

The Fishbone diagram came out of Japan (not surprisingly). Also called Ishikawa diagrams, they are somewhat advanced idea organizers in comparison to the others we have on this list. This diagram analyzes the relationship between a cause and its effect. You can use it to drill down into the root cause of a problem by organizing a complex cause-effect event into categories. The Fishbone diagram is widely used in quality control.

The templates are mere tools. Ideas and brainstorming effectiveness will depend on how well you put them on paper or on the screen. But MS Word and its gallery of templates give you easily downloadable files that can be turned into idea organizers in a flash. Customize the templates by changing the text labels and/or adding to the sections.

Are you a brainstorming kind of guy? Tell us how you go about it and tell us especially if MS Word is on your list of tools. What do you think of these brainstorming capable templates?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Remember Google Body Browser? This used to be a very cool Google Labs project that let you view a 3D human body picture and learn about it. Well, it’s gone now, such is the way of some Labs projects. The company behind it, Zygote, says that that it will release it as a full product. But that doesn’t mean you have to wait, because BioDigital Human is available right now, for free, and it’s incredibly comprehensive and fun to use.

The Main View

The main view shows pretty much what you would expect: A detailed 3D rendering of the human body.

On the left is a tool pane that lets you zoom in on specific parts of the body; on the right there’s a list of common conditions, and at the bottom there’s a view toolbar. These are three powerful controls, so we’ll be looking at each in turn.

Finding The Parts You Want To Learn About

Let’s say you’re reading an article about body building, and it mentions something called brachioradialis. That sounds like a condition, but it’s a body part. So just start typing it into the Search box:

Instantly you get several results (live search is very fast). Just hover over each of the results, and the visual display instantly zooms in on the part of the skeleton you’re searching for. Once you see the part you’re looking for, click it, and it will remain in focus:

Learning About A Body Part

Now that you’ve zoomed in on the part of the body you want to learn about, the top-right frame displays information about it, as well as common conditions related to that part:

Clicking on a condition brings up even more information, along with a source citation:

I think this is brilliant, because it lets you instantly learn about conditions related to parts of the body. So if someone complains about a body part that aches, you can just zoom in on that part of the body and look up common conditions that have to do with it.

Layers

So far we’ve only looked at the skeleton, and a single muscle. You can filter the display according to numerous layers:

As you can see above, each layer lets you drill in and display only very specific parts. So you can turn off the skeletal system and switch on just specific parts from other systems, to get a “floating” display of specific body organs.

Above is a part of the human lung, for example. Of course, this being a 3D model, you can easily rotate it around and look at it from all possible angles.

The Bottom Toolbar

The bottom toolbar lets you rotate, pan and zoom using the mouse, but it also packs several other tricks. You can use it to switch between the male and female versions of the model (this isn’t an instant switch – it takes a moment to load), toggle labels on or off, take snapshots, and switch views.

Here’s an example of the views using the same body part.  First is the Standard View, which looks like this:

Next is X-Ray view:

This is fairly self-explanatory; and last but now least is the isolated view, which you’ve seen before (it shows you just the currently selected part).

The last feature I’d like to mention is the Dissect tool. It basically lets you make parts of the model disappear by clicking them. So if you’re trying to zoom in on a specific area but have too much in the way, you can selectively hide the parts that you don’t want to see, while leaving everything else in place for added context.

Final Thoughts

BioDigital Human is also available as a Chrome add-on. As far as I could see, there are no major differences between the Web-only version and the add-on. Whether you’re an aspiring medical student or simply a curious individual, BioDigital Human is an invaluable utility, and beautifully executed. A fantastic service, especially considering the price (free!).

This whole semester I’ve been dealing with e-textbooks and using just an Android tablet (Acer Iconia A500) to digitize all of my schoolwork to answer these questions. It’s not even the end of the semester but I can conclude that it’s been more of a hassle than a convenience. The tablet itself is great, but using technology in school isn’t quite the same. Remember the Kno tablet? While I thought it was revolutionary, the concept didn’t seem to be picked up by schools. Universities, professors and students simply (some may be but most) aren’t ready to embrace digital textbooks, and not all professors make it easier for students who want to use their laptops or tablets to replace pen and paper.

Have An e-Textbook? You Will Fail An Open-Book Test

The argument of e-books versus traditional textbooks books goes beyond whether you prefer the look and feel of an actual book to the more unnatural book-on-a-screen experience. In terms of practicality, there are many obstacles and opposing forces to replacing physical books with digital versions for good. For instance, even right now when tablets have been hot for at least a year since the iPad 1 came out and there are quite a few people who can afford them, none of my professors at my apparently-expert-in-social-media school so far have declared that they prefer digital textbooks. One of my Computer Science professors reasoned that you can easily cheat on a test, go online on your web-enabled device and easily call or email your mom and ask her to look up the answer in a textbook for you. You could also simply Google the answer.

Having e-books and web-enabled devices also limit forms of testing, which is a just a headache for instructors. They’ll probably hate you for making them figure out a way you can’t cheat on the test and giving them additional work. This is true when the study material is as difficult as figuring out the answer to some obscure logic riddle, and some professors might prefer to give open-notes and open-textbook tests. Right now, since there are some students with the physical books and some with the e-books, those who purchase the digital versions of the textbooks end up disadvantaged.

Students could solve this by printing segments of their textbooks for the exams, but this is usually not permitted per the textbook publisher. How do I know this? My classmates who buy the (cheaper) digital textbook end up going through hoops of inconvenience to secure a remotely decent grade during these open-textbook exams. That usually includes having to figure out a way to bypass the limitation the textbook publisher has imposed for the e-book – you can only print 10 pages at a time. So the unpleasant options you have when you buy the digital textbook are to either print 10 pages at a time, harass a classmate to make photocopies of their physical book or buy the textbook anyway. I swear this is happening in one of my classes this semester.

Have An e-Textbook & Are Majoring In The Sciences? Your Book Will Confuse You

Another downside I have seen when traditional textbooks are replaced is that not all the text in a specialized textbook will be compatible with the rendering engine of an e-reader or tablet. I am NOT kidding. I’ve seen this first hand when one of my classmates who got the Kindle textbook ended up being totally confused with a formula. The way the formula was displayed on the Kindle involved a delta triangle instead of the correct symbols.

Talking about incompatibility, here’s an example of something equally confusing from my actual Logic class notes on my Android tablet.

I’m pretty sure those squares up there in the screenshot were meant to be curly braces, but that is just a guess.

Stylus Or Not, Hand-Writing On A Tablet Will Suck (& Be Slower Than If You Just Freakin’ Use Pen & Paper)

Right now, iPad and tablet owners have probably thought it best to try a stylus in the hope that they can replace paper. I know I have. I used Bamboo’s Stylus for iPad, which is supposed to be one of the best styluses out there, on Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro, which is probably the best drawing app on the Android Market right now. Though both were good, no matter how long I tried to get used to it, I have found that using a stylus on a touchscreen just isn’t as pleasurable as it is using pen and paper.

It’s probably too much to ask for the stylus experience to be similar to what you get with a pen, I reckon, but it’s the precision and extra pressure you need to add that put me off. Want some proof? Here are my actual notes, taken with a stylus. Does this look legible to you?

Parts of my hand-writing aren’t so bad; some other parts look like hieroglyphs. If you own an iPad and have experienced something different, let me know in the comments. For me, no matter how much I try to like a stylus, it just doesn’t cut it for me.

As you can see here in my actual Logic class notes, another problem I’ve experienced is that if you’re focusing somewhat hard on making your notes legible, guess what, it’ll take you longer than usual and perhaps the professor will have moved on and erased the tidbit of information that was meant to copied quickly.

There are also problems when your tablet doesn’t actually support palm rejection or requires you to write really big and you have to keep zooming in and out. There have been some newer tablets that hold promise and seem to solve some of these problems, like the Noteslate (which seems to be vaporware), the HTC View and the Lenovo Thinkpad tablet. If you have these tablets, please share your experiences in the comments.

Now if we’re talking about a graphics tablet (like a 12’’ Cintiq), it might be a whole different ball game, but you’ll have to lug around both your laptop and the graphics tablet to school, and set up your little office during every single class, provided you have enough desk space…

There’s No Way To Sync Last-Read Points In Your Study Material

You like having your leisure books synced on the Kindle, Kobo, Google Books, etc. apps, right? Imagine having to study books and slides (especially PDF slides and Powerpoint presentations that professors use so much these days) and not having a way to sync these across your computer, tablet or phone. It becomes increasingly annoying when there are more and more instructors relying on these slideshows and there’s always a need to either print them out (countering the purpose of saving paper in the first place) or re-figure out again where it is that you last read.

This frustration is something I’ve personally experienced and perhaps is not well-founded since you could try to figure out a way to remember the last checkpoints in your collection of slides, but I just don’t see why e-books can be synced so easily nowadays, yet digital slides, online tutorials, etc, aren’t so easy to organize.

That’s why I appreciate ideas like Ibis Reader which allows you to upload PDF documents and read them on the web with any device, but until the project is optimized for bookmarking last-read pages and so forth, it’s just for the casual reader that’s not in school.

Yes, Benefits Do Exist

I’ve encountered some inconveniences as you can see, but there are more good sides of owning a laptop , tablet or smartphone.

Not only do tablets (and smartphones too!) make good clocks, they also are just lighter than a pile of textbooks of course, offer excellent battery life, are great e-readers (not for school), can be your personal planners, etc.

The point of this post isn’t to bash tablets or laptops. This rant is just my opinion of the current state of personal technology in schools. There are many ways to solve or remedy these concerns, but as of right now, the notion of having digital textbooks and using tablets for school is fraught with many problems. The transition to digitizing schoolwork is just fractured in many places because some are enthusiastic about the old ways, and others are ready to touch the future (on their tablets).

Agree or disagree? Let us know your opinions in the comments below!

Image credit: karam Miri, Dmitry Lobanov, Digital Storm, Olaf Speier

TaskMate

Keeping up with tasks and other responsibilities is the key to academic success for all students. There are several task management applications for Mac users with  the cost up to $80. But TaskMate is a free, easy-to-use, tool that sits in your Mac menubar. You can quickly add a new task, and review and export your list for printing or sharing.

See our article, 8 Easy Ways To Manage Tasks With Remember the Milk for other tasks management ideas.

iProcrastinate

For a more elaborate test management tool, the well designed and equally easy-to-use, iProcrastinate looks to be almost perfect for students. iProcrastinate is more than a todo list application like TaskMate; iProcrastinate allows you to break down your academic assignments and tasks into subjects, as well as assign due dates and “Star” tasks that are most important to you.

iProcrastinate includes features for creating steps for accomplishing tasks and linking to related files in your hard drive. An iPhone version of iProcrastinate is also available in the iTunes App Store.

Evernote

We have written several articles about Evernote, which is a cross-platform application, perfect for keeping class notes, webpages, and related text files.

The best thing about Evernote is that whatever you add to it can be accessed in your online account, Mac computer, or iOS device. Evernote is also supported by other third-party applications and iOS apps.

MindNode

Brainstorming ideas and drawing connections between various concepts and facts is what is done by all students in most academic courses. Using what is called mindmapping may be a better way to develop and visualize ideas and related concepts than making simple lists.

Jeffrey’s article on mind mapping explains more about the process. If this appeals to you, you should check out and download the free version of MindNode from the Mac App Store.

Carbon Copy Cloner

While Mac computers are well known for being very stable, regularly backing up your hard drive is nevertheless essential for unexpected crashes and failures. Apple’s Time Machine is pretty sufficient for retrieving previously deleted documents, but a full-blown backup application called backup Carbon Copy Cloner will make a bootable copy of your entire hard drive.

You can set up Carbon Copy Cloner to run in duplicate your hard drive on a scheduled basis—daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Cloner makes incremental backups (only copying files that have been changed since the last clone) of your hard drive to an external drive so it can be booted whenever needed.

Namely

If you have fifty or more applications installed on your Mac, it can be a painful waste of time to open your applications folder in order to launch a program that you might not use very often, and does not reside in your Dock. There are several tools for launching Mac applications, but hardly none are easy to use than Namely.

You call up this tool using a keyboard shortcut (the search box will pop up under your menubar), and then simply type the name of application you want to launch.

Skim

I have reviewed Skim before as the best PDF reader and annotation tool for Mac users. While Apple provides a free PDF reader (Preview) as part of OS X, Skim is much better for students who do lots of research. Skim includes features for not only annotating documents, but also for bookmarking pages of individual PDFs and exporting notes to a plain text format. Skim is also a free Mac tool.

Bean Text Editor

Apple’s TextEdit may be the only word processing application that most students need. However, if TextEdit seems somewhat limited, but you don’t want to use a larger application like Microsoft Word or Pages, you might want to give Bean a try. While Bean doesn’t do footnotes or predefined text styles, it does include features like live word count, auto saving, a floating Windows option (like Stickies has), built-in dictionary, word completion, and date stamped backups.

Think

When you use the computer a lot, it’s often easy to get distracted by other applications and Internet browsing. Think is a Mac tool that may help you get more focused by blocking out other running applications and Finder windows on your Mac, so you can concentrate on a single application you’re using for homework or a specific course assignment.

When you launch Think, it presents you with a familiar application switcher of your opened applications. After you select one, Think darkens everything else on your desktop except for the selected application. You can adjust the opacity of the dark backdrop to your liking.

Dropbox

Similar to Evernote, the cross-platform application called Dropbox is another essential tool for any student who wants to access files from his or her desktop, online account, and/or iOS device. For the most part, Dropbox has replaced the Documents folder on my Mac—simply because it enables me to access my documents from anywhere I have Wi-Fi connection. Dropbox is also supported by many third-party applications, and has several uses that we have previously written about.

Let us know about other free Mac tools you recommend for academic success. And for more ideas about free Mac tools check out this article.