How apps and technology are helping school and college students

Time Management Apps

Managing time and schedule causes a major source of stress for many students. A survey conducted by the company Kit Out My Office in the UK noted 49% of nearly 1,300 students felt the most stress from workloads and upcoming deadlines; 87% of the surveyees relied on apps primarily to recall deadlines and manage their time accordingly to ensure adequate amounts of time of work are allotted to each task.

Clock and calendar apps as well as smart devices, such as the Amazon Echo, have functions to set up alerts for a reminder of specific events and deadlines. Other apps that help with managing one’s time include ToDoist and Timetable.

Mobile Productivity Apps

Access to the right data at any time and in any setting is the trendy app-enabled luxury of the organized student.  The cloud can hold it all, the record of important notes, study books, reference material, calendars, and homework.  Google provides numerous apps to not only create but also edit and store various types of files, from typed documents to presentations, to images, into one personal online space with easy access from tablets, phones, and computers. Dropbox gives 2 GB of cloud storage for free and 1 TB, for a fee. Additionally, both apps can interact with different operating systems, allowing students to work without worrying of platform incompatibility.

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, reserved in the past for the engineering world, is now available for commercial use and gets embedded in applications.  Scanner Pro will turn on the phone camera and scan pages of printed documents or books. Its OCR feature will recognize the characters and convert the content into editable text. From phone devices to laptops to digital recorders, students can record lectures and store the information digitally in the cloud. For the person who absorbs information by writing things down, notetaking tablets give the feel of writing on paper with the benefit of a digital record that is typed. SoundNote simultaneously combines audio, handwriting, and drawing. Office Lens captures a classroom whiteboard and turns the picture into an Adobe or Microsoft Office compatible file.

Test Preparation Apps

Students often turn to others for aid when it comes to studying for tests and completing homework. Study groups get together before tests to review the material, cross reference and expand notes with homework checked and reviewed to ensure the work is correct and consistent. With a heavy workload, some students may not have the access or ability to attend such meetings or receive second opinions.

With today’s offerings, students have a means to review for their course with test prep and review apps. BenchPrep helps prepare for upcoming exams, like the SAT, the GMAT, and other standardized tests. StudyBlue and GoConqr enable to create digital flashcards that generate quizzes.

Safety Apps

Safety on campus requires personal vigilance, peer watching, and on campus police. bSafe and Circle of Six trigger SOS signals with the person’s location and use the phone camera to record the situation live. My Safetipin scores geographical areas, streets, neighborhoods by its level of safety. One Scream will launch a text and a phone call to an emergency contact when detecting a loud panic reaction even from the inside of a bag. LifeSafe supports alert features as well as two-way communications for virtual walking-with-a-friend.

Fitness Apps

Wellbeing and healthiness may be pushed to the side with a student’s heavy workload. A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC in 2014 reported that 35% of adults are not getting the recommended amount of sleep each night. Side jobs often supplement coursework and the driving to and from school. The sleep deprived student may rely on easy make meals, energy drinks, and sugary snacks to sustain attention and weather the stress. Meals may also be skipped for financial or time scarcity reasons.  Several applications act as the friendly coach who values life balance on campus. My FitnessPal tracks food intake, steps, and exercise along specific fitness goals. Water Drink Reminder records water consumption. Sworkit Lite supports the busy student who can seize the moment, how small it might be, to perform a fitness exercise.

Socializing Apps

Keeping in touch with friends and family gradually becomes more difficult for students as their workload increases and they are forced to prioritize study and work time over social gatherings. This is especially so if the student’s parents are extremely far away. Thankfully, with the numerous improvements made to cellular phones over the years, students can now contact their family whenever and wherever. Even apps have been developed to keep people in touch over long distances, most notably Skype and FaceTime.  Snapchat and Instagram can supplement the schools own social apps.

Navigation Apps

Often first year students feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the university grounds and the similarity look of buildings can be disorienting. A wanderer in search of a classroom, dorm or facility can use Campus Maps, an app that features numerous colleges and give clear point-point directions.

Finance Apps

Managing finances and covering tuition payments trigger stress and anxiety when high college tuitions eat a huge portion of income earned from side jobs. According to a study in 2018 performed by The New Normal, more than 70% of college students have jobs and 25% of that number are working fulltime jobs. Banks have developed custom apps for their clients in college that facilitate managing bills and school payments with transactions on the go. Personal money management apps, Mint and PayPal make it easier to keep track of spending.

Checklist of Noteworthy Apps

Campus Maps is a navigation app featuring major university grounds.

Evernote captures notes and images, make lists, and record memos.

Financial Aid for Students provides guidance with applying for loans and surveys loan payments and deadlines.

Grade Tracker Pro! Tracks schedule, homework and grades and provides scenarios to reach high grades.

Instagram a social app that trades photos.

LifeSafe enables two-way communications for safety alerts or for virtual walking-with-a-friend.

MealBoard keeps track of grocery lists and recipes.

Microsoft Office  offers several apps that adapt Microsoft’s products into a mobile form.

Mint helps consumers keep track of personal finances, records savings and expenses and notifies of upcoming bill payments.

My FitnessPal is a fitness assistant app.

My Safetipin scores geographical areas, streets, neighborhoods by its degree of safety.

myHomework – It not only keeps track of classes and homework, but also allows users to label the status of all assigned work.

Notes Plus  is a note-taking app for students to either type or write down notes on a tablet. It also audio record lectures and meetings and link them to specific pages of the notes taken.

Office Lens is an app to take photos of white boards and save them as PDFs, images, or any other document type file.

One Scream reacts to a scream and sends an emergency text and dials a phone number.

PayPal enables payments digitally from a bank account without the need for a wallet or credit card.

Scanner Pro is an application that scans printed documents.

Sleep Cycle  keeps track of sleep time and adjust the time of the wake-up alarm to the lightest phase of sleep.

Snapchat a social app that shares photos and comments.

SoundNote  records the lecture simultaneously with taking notes.

Sworkit Lite customizes the fitness exercise to an allotted time.

Timetable  keeps track of a student’s schedule and can remind of deadlines and tasks.

ToDoist creates checklists and monitors projects and events logged into it.

Water Drink Reminder records water consumption.

Also read: 

College Students Guide to Tablets, Laptops and Mobile Devices

Useful Apps and Technology for the Classroom

6 Best Apps for High School Students

The productive student can equip its arsenal of tools with a large array of apps that organize time, accelerates notetaking and learning, eliminate tedious repetitive tasks, and bring to the fingertips many experts. The digitally astute student will save an immense amount of time and journey a faster ride to graduation.