Students, while nothing will replace hard work, continual advances in technology and the refining of learning methods means there are always new tools and new ways engage with your course material and get the most out of your time in education.
Let’s take a closer look at the best tools and tips to help you study in 2018 …
1) Buncee for Presentations
PowerPoint is sooo old-hat—if you really want to impress people with your class presentations and projects, give Buncee a try. In fact, teachers themselves are turning to it to help deliver fun and engaging lessons as well.
You can easily include animations, graphics, and video, and it encourages your own creativity to shine through.
If you’re marked on audience participation, you no longer have to go with the old “does anyone have any questions,” approach. The platform lets you create interactive and engaging elements for your viewers to take part in, such as puzzles, quizzes, and riddles.
2) CoSpaces for AR and VR Learning Spaces
Many students already use Facebook Messenger or other social platforms to stay in touch and collaborate outside of the classroom, but CoSpaces allows you to create augmented and virtual reality learning spaces that can be accessed on any device. It also makes a great addition to the classroom itself.
Perhaps you want to creatively represent a scientific concept, give a virtual presentation with interactive 3D objects, or get people to solve problems.
There is a free and premium version, the latter which you might want to suggest to your teachers or professors.
Note: Need more cash to fund you’re your studies and extra tools? You can get loan help for up to $5,000 easily online.
3) Flash Cards Over Highlighters and Definitely No Tech!
As helpful as modern technology can be, science proves that for revision and letting the information sink in, it’s best to handwrite notes and use flashcards.
We’ll explain—a 2014 study revealed that handwriting down your notes results in better memory recall. Experts believe that the physical act of writing creates a deeper level of processing.
Likewise, the same year it was reported that separating the important parts of your notes on to flash cards, focusses the mind much better than highlighting the same areas within a large chunk of text.
Putting these two things together, you might want to handwrite the most important parts of your notes on to flash cards!
4) Exercise for Cognitive Performance
Instead of reaching for coffee or other artificial means of stimulation it is now firmly established that exercise is one of the best boosters of cognitive performance and processing.
For example, a 2013 study revealed that those who moderately exercised for 15 minutes before taking working memory tests had higher accuracy and faster response time than those who just sat and looked at pictures.
So, before studying or taking a test doing a light jog and some push-ups (or even just a brisk walk) can get the blood flowing to the brain, improve focus, and help you perform better. It can also get the brain in an optimum state to learn in the first place.
5) Smaller Sessions for More Learning
‘Cramming’ is never a good idea because after a certain amount of time your brain essentially switches off and refuses to learn, even if you’re still technically reading.
A 2016 study of 600 business school students suggests that smaller study sessions (no longer than 30 minutes), broken up by 10-minute breaks, helps retain 20% more information. Furthermore, the research showed that the majority of students sitting through long lectures remembered the information from the first 30 minutes the most.
6) Office Lens for Mobile Scanning
The Office Lens mobile app allows you to take instant scans of notes, documents, screens etc, with your phone camera for easy access later. It will crop and tidy up these images and can even turn photos of a whiteboard or presentation screen into a word document for easy editing.
In other words, it can take notes from existing sources for you!
7) Simple Mind for Mind Mapping
Mindmapping couldn’t be easier than with the SimpleMind app. It allows you to get your thoughts out and review them in an illustrative and aesthetic way, with no limitations on page size/borders or the number of individual maps one page—just swipe/scroll as you see fit.
You can also add audio, images, and video, in many different ways to create more useful and interactive maps than you can scribble by hand.
Are you a student this year? Comment below and let us know what apps, tools and methods you’re using to retain the information and stay on top of your work!