Sure, we’ve talked a little bit about instructor ratings here on MakeUseOf before, but surely there’s something a little better out there. Fortunately, I’ve found found a little site called Koofers, and with over 4000 universities using it nationwide, you know that it’s your all-access pass to professor reviews, study tips, and more.

A Review On Reviews

As just a personal preference, if I’m going to any third-party website concerning my university, I’m only really going to go there to check out the professor reviews. With Koofer’s you can definitely do this using their 5-star rating program complete with personal student reviews. Granted, you should keep in mind that any online university review is biased, so use your judgement when taking into consideration the opinions of others. Sometimes a person who is a poor student will simply blame the teacher, but other times the professor is just that pitiful.

Fortunately, there is another system in place in which you and others can actually rate the reviews. If a review doesn’t seem legitimate (or the reviewer only gave the professor his stars and wrote nothing else), you can click whether or not his input was useful. Koofers will place the most helpful reviews at the top of the list, and from there, you can get a pretty solid understanding of what the professor is actually like.

As always, I like to take a look at the search system of a website simply because if you have a bad search function, then it’s likely the website is poor as well. Koofers allows you to search by class, instructor, and even class by instructor. Yes, you may hear a horrible review about a professor’s 2020 class. However, if you click over to his 2030 class, there may be glowing reviews. That’s a pretty good thing, in my opinion.

The Campus Online

Another element of Koofers is its desire to bring the campus online. Part of me doesn’t necessarily like this feature, for it seems to pass itself off as a weak social networking system that is supposed to bring the classroom to the tubes. The idea in theory is wonderful, but since Koofers’ users probably already communicate via Facebook (or in at least my case, do not communicate at all), there isn’t really much of a place for it. However, with elements such as the “class wall” which allows you to post messages to your fellow students, I am positive others could make use of it.

Despite the in-house social networking attempt, Koofers does an excellent job of integrating with Facebook. Simply sign in with your account, and when you start adding classes to your schedule, you will be able to connect with your classmates and be able to communicate with them via Facebook as well. The only downside to this is the practically forced option of Facebook. You can sign up with your email address only, but you will miss out on some features such as building your class schedule and communicating with fellow students.

In addition to the class community building, Koofers also allows you to share notes, videos, and flashcards with all your classmates so that you can work on studying together. Besides this – and I’m not sure how ethical it is – the website also allows past students to post old tests, quizzes, and exams on the site itself. Is it likely that the professor will change the test each semester? Yes. Is it also likely that he won’t? Yes.

Some Spiffy Tools

Besides all the basic stuff focused on your educational enrichment, Koofers also has set up a portion of its site in which you can buy or sell textbooks. So if you really want to go see that Deathcab concert, you have a place to sell your books even if it’s the middle of the semester. (No guarantee that anyone will buy, though.) Besides this, there is even a GPA Calculator for people like myself who often think, “Well. If I make a C in here, and if I make a B in there, I can still come out with a 3.25!”

Also, if you’re feeling a little studied out, Koofers supposedly has a variety of web games to play. However, while working on this review, I noticed that the games actually didn’t load… Chances are that they may not actually work, but that doesn’t take away from the functionality of the rest of the site.

Conclusion

Being a university student, I can definitely see where Koofers could help me out. As an endnote, you should know there is even a karma system based on information sharing, so you can use this to know who is reliable on Koofers. Also, whether you are a student yourself or if you know one, this is a nice website that should definitely be shared with the rest of the world, so pass the word on.

What other sites do you use to aid you in class selection and studying? What do you think of Koofers online university reviews?

There are an overwhelming number of things you can do to get into college – get good grades, participate in extra-curricular programs, volunteer in your community, regularly visit your guidance councilor, study hard for your SAT and ACT tests and much more. This web app helps you keep track of it all and, more importantly, do it all.

Acceptly is both a to-do list and an encyclopedia of the information you need in order to get into college. Focused primarily on admission to American universities, Acceptly is perfect for any American high school student or anyone hoping to get into an American university. Most importantly, with its game-like features including points and badges, Acceptly makes the hard work of getting accepted less stressful.

How It Works

Log into Acceptly and you’ll be presented with things to do. The software is smart enough never to overwhelm you with tasks, rarely showing you anything more than three easily-accomplished steps:

These steps are broken down into six categories: Academics, Activities, Testing, College Choice, Applications, Financial Aid. A logical sequence of tasks exists in each of these categories, all of them a great combination of information and things you can do to increase your chances of getting into college.

For example, there is the “Academics” section:

Like I said before: only a few tasks are shown to you. This makes the process seem less overwhelming than it is. The steps themselves aren’t complicated; instead, they represent one small step on the path to acceptance. For example, getting to know your high school’s guidance counselor:

It’s simple, but a very important step; your guidance counselor is an important resource for getting into college. Later steps will build upon your introduction and encourage you to keep in touch and consult with your counselor.

There are similar small steps in the “Testing” section for you to check out and accomplish:

Again, the tasks you can fulfill are simple but important, and frequently very informative. Here is an early step regarding the SAT:

It’s a small step, but looking up when you can take the SAT is an important first step to getting into college. Information is combined with active research on your part. Data is recorded and fed back to you. Everything is built from the ground up to keep you organized in your quest to get into college.

Have a college-related question that the system isn’t answering for you? The “Questions” feature allows you to get answers to your questions from an actual human being:

While I’m not sure my specific question will get a useful answer, Acceptly does promise expert answers within 24 hours.

Points & Badges

Like I said earlier, every time you fulfill a task, you become closer to getting into college. To reflect this, Acceptly rewards you with points. The harder a task is the more points you get for a task. You cannot trade these points in for anything; rather, they serve primarily as feedback for you as you continue to work towards your goal. Simply put, Acceptly makes very good use of feedback loops.

This gameification isn’t unique to Acceptly — The Email Games uses a similar idea to encourage you to empty out your inbox.

In addition to points you will occasionally be rewarded for your efforts with badges:

Again, these badges aren’t practically worth anything, but being rewarded for effort makes it more likely that you’ll stick to your plan. Every little bit helps.

Early Access From MakeUseOf!

Acceptly isn’t open to the public until mid September, but MakeUseOf readers can try the service out right now.

Click Here To Try Acceptly Now

Feel free to leave your thoughts about the app in the comments below. And feel free to give your thoughts to the Acceptly team. They have a very good feedback system.

We will show you two websites and services that will help you facilitate this. Check them out below and if you have others that you have used in the past (and are free or have a free option) list them in the comments for the greater good of the group!

The first free high school reunion website we will be taking a look at is called Reunion Watch. When you get to their website, their homepage looks like this:

They have a lot of features such as message boards and email service with a @ReunionWatch.com email address. They also have guest books, templates and 12MB of storage”¦(this is not 1999! But you can upload images to another site and link to them from your Reunion Watch website to save on file size).

The link on their homepage to build your free high school reunion website is probably what you are looking for if you are reading this article. That will take you to here:

From this page you can set up a domain name you currently own, register a new domain or use a free sub-domain of Reunion Watch. This is the option that we will choose and the easiest of them all. They then provide different plans but as you know MakeUseOf loves free. So we will be using the free one and making the most of it.

Then they tell you for $5 you can get rid of the ads on your high school reunion website. Guess what – we don’t care about them and we will leave them be!

You then continue on to set up your website. When you are done you will have something that resembles this example:

The site looks a little like it was created in 1999 but it is very functional and with improved graphics you can make the site appear as you want it. Here is the sample site:

Another website that allows you to set up a high school reunion site is ClassCreator. When you arrive at their homepage you will see this:

Clicking on Create Site in the menu bar will take you to here:

They will ask you to recommend an administrator if you do not feel you are the best one. Chances are you are, so just continue on and choose your country, city, state and graduation year like so:

Then schools will appear. Choose your school and continue on. You will be asked a boatload of questions like your school’s colors, website color, notifications, messages, contact information and a lot more. Answer only what you want and skip what you don’t need. You can always go back and fix it later.

When you are done you will pick a template and boom just like that you will be live. This site has a lot more options than the first so choose which way you want to go! And have fun out there!

When it’s all said and done, however, the time and effort you’ve put in will pay off. I doubt you’ll complain once you’re making six figures.

So who wants to go to law school? Not me, that’s for sure. But for those of you brave students who are actively pursuing this endeavor, I’m sure you could use a little help along the way. Now I can’t take your bar exam for you (not that you’d want me to) but I can give you a list of helpful websites and resources. Here at MakeUseOf we like to make things easy for you, so I have compiled this list of the best websites for law students for your reference. I hope you find them useful.

Law.com Dictionary

What better place to start than by brushing up on your legal definitions? Law.com’s dictionary is a comprehensive list of (probably) every legal term known to man. Each term is accompanied with its definition, respectively. This invaluable resource has everything from “˜a fortiori’ to “˜zoning’ covered. It is a page that I’m sure you will refer to again and again. Also, Law.com itself is a great place to get daily news and information regarding your field.

Advanced Advocates

“Advanced Advocates is the world’s first collaborative platform for law students. [It] is the only network in the world full of relevant content and features designed exclusively for law students.”

AA, as it is so aptly named, allows you to review case briefs in a user-friendly format, create/edit briefs with wiki functionality, and search for briefs by party names, subject, and authors. You can leave/review clerk ratings, share outlines, and hold case discussions. It also has group creation ability.

When signing up, AA does require a law school email address. This is so they can keep the site exclusive to law school students.

Justia

Justia provides legal resources for lawyers. Coincidentally, a lot of this information could be useful to law students (such as you) as well. Justia has a wealth of information, including legal practice, research, and the latest cases in the news. It also has an inclusive “˜blawg’ search that covers over a thousand law blogs.

Social Media Law Student

Speaking of blogs, Social Media Law Student is a pretty popular one. Their goal is “to connect lawyers with new technologies in hopes of making the practice of law easier”, and as far as I can tell they are the only ones doing this.

SMLS boasts a group of the most tech savvy law students, lawyers, and legal professionals as its contributors and appeals to anyone interested in law and technology. Articles cover the latest legal trends, technologies, apps, and social networking tools. They have received various awards and accolades for their efforts (this being one of them).

LawLink

Speaking of social networks (you see the pattern yet?), LawLink is “the first and largest social network for law professionals”. LawLink’s services include networking, public profile creation, a Twitter law forum, more than 100 law groups, the sharing of legal documents, a Q&A section, top news, forum creation, and a classified ads section.

Needless to say, it’s not hard to keep busy on LawLink. When you join you are automatically a member of your law school group. You must be a law student, attorney, expert witness, or law professional to join.

Additional Resources

If you’ve made it this far then you’re well on your way to becoming a successful law school graduate. Because you like to work hard””and are probably used to it””I have provided some extra reading for you. After all, good law student resources are hard to find. Trust me, I know. Here they are:

ESQChat Blogs

ESQChat is a forum in which you must be a practicing attorney to be a member of. Never mind that, because they have a pretty good collection of blogs for you to read on their Blog Categories page. You don’t have to be a member to view this page and it is host to 244 blogs in 42 categories as of this writing. You are sure to find some interesting content there.

In Propria Persona

In Propria Persona is a law and technology blog that has some pretty good information written from a personal perspective. The post ‘10 Alternative Legal Research Sites‘ caught my eye and is a prime example of some of the content you can find there.

100 Best Lifehacks for Law Students

I tried to think of a way to break down this list into a set of key articles for you to read, but I think that doing that yourself is half the learning experience. Some of the links are a bit dated, but there is some interesting tips, ideas, and help located there, all geared towards law students.

That’s it! I wish you the best of luck in law school and I hope you find these resources useful in your quest to become an attorney. If you have any useful sites or interesting comments, ideas, or concerns, please leave a comment below.

Image Credit: sbpp

Nerd-ness, for me, goes back to the pursuit of knowledge. Nerds are studious people – information junkies – maintaining their mental fitness, and getting smart in the process. Nerds crave knowledge.

It’s time to throw out those Steve Urkel-ish stereotypes, and go back to the real nerds; people like Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli and John Dee.

The Age of Enlightenment is long past, but there’s still place for those real nerds in our current society. The global education system is skyrocketing – best of all – the internet is here to stay. A worldwide network of knowledge, if you know where to look.

Below are some of the best and most interesting websites for studious people and information junkies.

University Lectures – Academic Earth

With a little Googling, you’ll quickly find a number of accredited universities posting their lectures online.  Justin has just posted a great article on the subject. However, as is expected from most .edu sites, there’s little overview. Academic Earth makes an (unexpectedly) great alternative.

The site has previously been mentioned in the directory, but quite surprisingly has never been mentioned in an article before.

Academic Earth combines an enjoyable interface with often fantastic material, offering lectures from the biggest universities – complete semesters even! With Academic Earth, you can study at all the world’s best universities, the only thing missing is a diploma to prove it.

Riveting Talks – TED.com

Mind you, being an information junkie does not necessarily make you captivating. Interesting and boring are sadly not mutually exclusive. If you attended university, you probably know what I’m talking about. Worst of all, you can hardly blame them – having to repeat the same stuff over and over would dispirit many men.

TED doesn’t broadcast university lectures. They aggregate the interesting. Every year, some of the world’s most brilliant minds come to talk at TED. It’s a place to be ponder, question and be amazed. They’re ideas worth spreading.

For more information on TED, take a look at Aibek’s Two Websites to Watch Talks by Great Thinkers and Doers.

Information on Everything – Wikipedia.org

Wikipedia needs no introduction. Everybody should know the wiki-based encyclopedia by now. It’s one of the internet’s most massive accumulations of information. Most people are familiar to using it when they’re dumbfounded by a particular term, but the underlying potential is much greater.

There are those information junkies who busy themselves with ‘reading Wikipedia’. You start at an interesting subject, and visit page after page by using the articles’ hyperlinks. It’s interesting. It’s addictive. Don’t try it at home.

HowStuffWorks

Beauty. It’s in the details. Finding out how things work is a personal fetish of mine. I’ve always tried to understand technology, and the systems that are weaved throughout our everyday life. It’s strangely empowering to know what’s happening behind the scenes at any given moment.

HowStuffWorks writes articles on everyday subjects – and the systems behind them. It’s the perfect place to go if you’re wondering about (and interested in) the process.

Free-eBooks.net

Literature eBooks are almost too easy to find. It was only recently that I encountered a truly great site for free informative eBooks. Free-eBooks.net offers HTML and PDF eBooks on numerous diverging topics, ranging from advertising to philosophy to youth.

Do you know any other cool sites for a knowledge junkie? Post your own favorites in the comments section below!