A guide on the best productivity and study tools/resources for students
For most of you, classes have already started and different tasks have been pestering you since day 1 - some are easy to handle, others so-so. With technology rapidly evolving, and education keeping it's pace with these innovations, school works have never been the same. From creating reports, making papers, shooting videos, doing art, choregraphing dances and jingles - almost anything your teacher might hink of, we students need tools that will help us in delivering these schoolwork, but we're very meticulous and we'd want the simplest and smartest tools to work with. So, I've listed tools that I've been using and personally think that are useful. Click on their names to check out their links.
Google Drive - from file storage, file sharing, word processing tool, slide presentation tool, spreadsheet tool, forms - google drive is your one-stop app for everything you need. It has the most coveted office tools - document, presentation, spreadheets, and forms, that will greatly help us students in getting our files ready. Google Drive is free to use, and is the saving grace to many of us who do not want to shed a single penny for proprietary software.
Quick tip: if you're making presentations on google drive and would want to save a personal copy, save it as PDF, this way you can save everything without breaking the design.
Google Scholar - Google Scholar allows you to access thousands of academic journals, perfect for your papers, reports, and other research projects you'll be doing. The thing I like about scholar though, is it's citation function which allows you to easily cite the sources from google scholars so that your teachers can actually say that your sources are legit, and so is your paper.
WolframAlpha, Symbolab - these two tools are great computational knowledge engines - meaning they can help you solve problems that you are finding a hard time answering. But quick tip, try solving your assigned problems first, attempt in providing the best answer, and only use these tools for checking. It's cheating if you'd let them answer our homeworks for you.
GIMP - GIMP is an image manipulation tool which can greatly help you if you're dealing with photos. I've made a post dedicated to GIMP so check it out.
polishmywriting - to those out there who's pet peeve is having to copyread your papers, here is a great tool that can help you check spelling, style, and grammatical errors. But remember, attempt creating a finished paper before using this tool, it will help you boost your English writing skills.
PatrickJMT, khanacademy - these two sites aren't really tools, but are resources which are great for auditory and visual learners, they provide neat explanations of your math lessons and give you tips on how to understand these concepts. PatrickJMT focus heavily on mathematics while khanacademy has a wide range of subjects including math, sciences, and accounting.
Trello - trello is a web app that will help keep track of your progress with your projects, and other what-nots that need time management. You basically put up a board, type in everything you have to do on the 'to-do' section and when you're finished, drag it to the 'done' section. This actually helps in boosting your work performance as it will help you look forward into dragging that task and proclaim that it is DONE!
Smore - are you part of an organization and you have to create a flier? Are you running for the student government and fliers are a neccesity? Or are you just someone who needs fliers? Smore is a free online tool (or you can pay to upgrade) that can help you create beautiful flyers.
Coursera - if you're a college student, you have time in between your classes, and is passionate about learning, you can visit coursera and enroll yourself in one of their classes. Classes are offered by top US universities, and like traditional classes offered by our schools, you get to have lectures, quizzes and exams. There is no harm in learning more!
If there are more tools you'd want to see on this list, message me.
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