Pencils, pens, notebooks, and three-ring binders no longer comprise students’ essential school supplies. These days, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and a host of apps are ubiquitous tools for students.
According to Brandon Painter of The Kansas State Collegian, such devices as the Apple (News - Alert) iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 are all the rage with college students. The Samsung (News - Alert) Galaxy Note 2 features a stylus, the S Pen, and it uses a built-in app called “S Notes.” With this feature, students can take notes, use sketches, underline, and circle any of their notes, documents, PDF files, or PowerPoint files—a feature not offered on an iPad.
Evernote is gaining in popularity as a note-taking option for iPad users. Reid Chapman, a junior in finance at the University of Missouri told Painter that he hadn’t heard of Evernote (News - Alert) before browsing the App Store earlier this year; “Being a new iPad owner, I was looking for a good note app. Evernote was laid out very simply and you catch on quick. It’s like knock-off Microsoft (News - Alert) Word.” Evernote claims on its website that it “wants to help the world remember everything,” and, with their numbers growing every year—13.5 million users to date—they are well on their way to attaining their lofty goal.
Another popular app for people to use other than Evernote is AudioNote. A nursing student at Johnson County Community College, Tony Sanchez, told Painter that he prefers to use the $3.99 version of AudioNote. Sanchez says that after discovering how much he liked it for audio recording and note-taking, he decided to buy the full version. Sanchez says it is a very easy app to use—not only does it sync with his Mac and keep all of his notes in one place, he is also able to simply type in the topic of the professor’s lecture, and, once the professor begins, the app takes care of it from there. If anyone is interested in trying AudioNote, there is a free AudioNote Lite that allows a user a trial period of use before they switch over to the full version, like Sanchez did.
For students who do not own iPads or Note 2s, there is an online version of flashcards that is also popular with students called “StudyBlue.” At one time, teachers would take toys away from children who played with them in class but now, electronic “toys” are the most effective way to learn.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson