So, after you get that Lumia phone, what are the best applications for students as the re-enter the gates of academia? Let’s take a look.
Please consider Mary, our fictitious student who attends Seton Hall University. Mary is really lucky because as an incoming freshman at Seton Hall, she’s received a Nokia Lumia 900 and is new the Windows Phone, so she’s thirsty for the latest apps and services that will enhance her daily experience as a student.
First off, Mary has some friends who keep talking about being able to swap files using a shared file service. She has a few friends who love DropBox and some other friends who already have Hotmail accounts, so naturally, they’re SkyDrive users.
No problem, because on her Lumia 900, Mary can either use the SkyDrive application on her phone. In order to keep in sync with her Dropbox using friends, she can use BoxFiles for Dropbox. With these respective apps, she can manipulate files and view documents. In fact, she can even share files from her phone with her classmates, making these apps must-haves for any student in 2012.
As her first week gets underway, Mary is getting nervous about being able to manage her schedule and keep her class deadlines straight. Between mid-terms, projects and other stresses, what’s Mary to do? Schedule gives Mary piece of mind as this application lets her know her upcoming lessons, times, teachers and the classrooms she needs to be in. Simply put, Schedule lets Mary keep all her classes in check.
In order to keep her work straight in her head, Mary uses Power Planner an app she uses to keep all her classwork in one easy app. Like Schedule, Power Planner lets her add classroom and track her schedule, but it goes one step further with automatic reminders, a super-fast homework entry system and online backup/restore.
Lastly, Mary is an avid Evernote user, and she’s happy to find that there is a great Evernote app for Windows Phone. With Evernote, she can enter, tag and take notes and it will all be in sync with her other devices. She can even take photos of handwritten notes for easy searching later.
Okay, now it’s time to get to work as Mary has a paper due on Monday. With Dictionary.com and Wikipedia, Mary has the tools she needs to deliver a well thought out and powerfully persuasive paper. Dictionary.com shows her spelling and also has audio pronunciation for when she’s stuck. If she’s deep in an old campus building with no signal, Dictionary.com will still be useful as it can work without an Internet connection.
Wikipedia gives Mary a great application for accessing the ubiquitous online encyclopedia tool.
If Mary has a task ahead of her requiring memorization, she can use Flashcards for her Lumia. Flashcards is great because Mary can build flash cards on her phone and not have to mess with 3×5 notebook cards and can even flag cards that continue to give you trouble. There’s a quiz mode to make sure your skills are sharp when it matters most.
For those times when Mary needs a calculator, Smartboard Calculator Free is a great option. This fun calculator that resembles an old fashioned blackboard and can handle algebra, geometry and trigonometry. You can even export the results to Excel if you want to share your brilliance!
Lastly, Mary hates buying physical books because she likes to keep a light load. Kindle Books from Amazon makes it possible for Mary to have access to the book she’s already bought over the years. She can also pick up the last page she read, bookmarks, and notes from all her books.
Which apps make your back to school a welcome event? We look forward to the comments!
Photo credit: stevecadman
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