the encouragement lounge: Cool Tools -- 12 Great Apps/Sites for Grad and Adult Students

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Cool Tools -- 12 Great Apps/Sites for Grad and Adult Students

Hi All, Here are twelve apps/websites that I find particularly helpful:

Communication:

Eyejot -- video mail. I love this -- more personal and connecting than email! Free version lets you send messages of up to one minute.

Doodle -- Easy scheduling tool, excellent for group work. Free.

Citation and source management:

Zotero -- organize your research sources, create groups to share information, and drag and drop sources to build your reference list. New plug in to expedite in-text citations and ref list. Free.

Diagramming:

Cacoo -- This a a diagramming tool (mind-maps, site maps, and other visual models) -- easy to use and offers a variety of useful icons. There is also a share tool. Free basic version available.

Document management:

Dropbox -- I was a late-comer to this, but now use it frequently. Dropbox lets you store and share files in the cloud. I use it to share files that are too big to email. Others use it so they can access their files from any computer. Free.

Yousendit -- another cloud-based service for sending and sharing large files. Free version available.

Social bookmarking:

Diigo -- excellent tool for organizing and archiving web pages. Also has annotation tools (highlighting and sticky notes). Additional cool feature is groups which allows you to easily share web pages. Free.

Note taking:

Evernote -- An excellent note-taking tool. I love that I can access my notes from any of my devices (cloud based) and that I can use tags (makes it much easier to find specific notes later). Free.

Blogs:

Prattlenog -- Written by my wonderful colleague Melanie Booth, this blog provides insight and inspiration for adult students. Melanie is a voracious reader and a deep thinker -- get her blog on your reader or bookmark and visit frequently.

APA Style Blog -- No secret that I find this blog very helpful, I link to it frequently. This blog is written by a team of experts who help us understand the ins and outs of APA style. Another one that is on my google reader.

Images (excellent for presentation slides, etc):

stock.xchng -- stock photo site with vast library of free images

The Noun Project -- web-based collection of symbols, all downloads free

Please write or comment below and share other apps and sites that help you to be more productive! All the best,

Harriet

P.S. I have no affiliation with any of these sites.

Photo by HLS

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Working adult students, on my mind...

I hope this blog will be helpful to friends and others involved in a variety of endeavors. However, I created the blog with students in mind and continue to develop it with that specific group as my focus.

I believe that with the increase in evening, weekend, and low-residency programs, students are working more and more in isolation. If we were all full-time students on campus, we would have the informal support that comes with being able to go down the hall and talk with a colleague, etc. But instead, we are working late nights and weekends at home in front of the laptop.

With that in mind, I hope the encouragement lounge provides brief moments of respite and energizing connection. This does not at all replace valuable face-to-face contact. Many aspects of the academic journey can only be addressed via in-depth conversations with colleagues and teachers. And I would always rather sit down and talk with someone than to communicate online. Nonetheless, my aim is to give you one more channel for quick hits of support.