Balancing student and work life can be difficult, but simple hacks can make a BIG difference. These helpful apps and websites will help you write more clearly, be more organised and present work that makes a real impact.
Alarms: Alarmy (Sleep If You Can)
If you struggle to get out of bed in the morning, then this is the app for you. No longer will you be late for college or racing to get to work on time! Alarmy is unique in that it can’t be turned off or put on snooze like regular alarms. Instead, you dismiss the alarm by completing ‘missions’. These missions range from solving simple mathematics to taking a picture, stimulating your brain sufficiently to wake you up. Farewell morning snooze cycle, hello active wake-ups!
Take notes, keep them all in one place and sync them to your other devices with Evernote. You can even add screenshots, images and PDFs to make your notes as detailed as possible. One of the great things about the app is that it can search through the words in your notes and help you find what you’re looking for.
But what if you prefer hand-written notes? No worries! You can take pictures of your writing instead. And if it’s legible, Evernote can identify your written words and bring them up in a search.
Working students have to juggle several tasks and responsibilities simultaneously, so it’s essential to get organised. Any.do is an award-winning app that helps people create lists, share them with others and get on top of their day-to-day tasks. It can sync across your devices including Siri and Alexa and best of all, it’s free.
Ever tried to email a file to someone but realised it’s too big? WeTransfer allows you to send up to 2GB for free via an email or a link. It’s quick, easy to use and if you want to send more data, you can sign up to WeTransfer Pro for a small monthly fee. And their homepage even features creative imagery and links to articles – what more could you want?
‘Create, share and publish mind-maps, hassle free!’ Mindmup allows you to make digital mind maps that are perfect for your brainstorming sessions. You can alter them when you like and share them with your study group members or with your teachers.
When you’re delivering a presentation or putting together creative content for class, make sure you make an impact! Canva has a myriad of video, social media, image and presentation templates that will make your presentation pop. Chose bold graphics, enticing fonts and eye-catching footage and give your work a professional feel that looks like it’s been worked on by a designer. It’s also fun to use so don’t be surprised if you start using it for your own social media posts, too!
If you’re not confident with your spelling or grammar, then Grammarly is the answer! Copy your written work into the website and watch as it highlights errors and makes suggestions for improvements. You can even enable Grammarly to work in sync with Gmail, Facebook, Twitter etc. to ensure that all of your writing is grammatically correct and error-free. But be aware that it uses American English to correct your writing so you may want to ignore some corrections.
QuillBot is a paraphrasing tool that rewrites your sentences and paragraphs using state-of-the-art AI. It is particularly useful when you feel yourself becoming repetitive in your writing and you need some help changing up the language. It’s also great for non-native English speakers who may be concerned that their writing is unclear or needs enhanced vocabulary. QuillBot makes writing easier and will save you heaps of editing time – perfect for time-poor working students!
Even native English speakers need to brush up on their vocabulary. These two websites combined will help you double check your word usage and find alternative options if your writing has become repetitive. Dictionary.com also features a Word of the Day, word games and even some light etymology.
If you’re studying at Central Australian College and need any further support with your studies, contact our student support team. We pride ourselves on our student care and will be more than happy to help however we can!
