 "App Weekly: Must have student-friendly apps that can help you prepare for the new year")
By Anusha Sinha Preparing for school or college involves getting the course books and stationery. With this collection of **apps** , you can now prepare your phone for the academic year as well! 1. Khan Academy Started by Salman Khan (not the actor) as a means to provide free, quality education through videos, Khan Academy is an excellent resource for learning almost anything. The subjects covered include CBSE level math for classes 5th to 12th, computer science, physics and even art history. You can also use the courses on SAT, IIT JEE and GMAT to aid your preparation for competitive exams. 2. Udemy Udemy offers great courses on pretty much any skill that you would want to learn. From Photoshop to game development to data science, there’s something here for every topic. Many of the courses are paid, but worth it if you could get them on sale. They usually cost around $200 but in sales which happen frequently, they come down to $15 or even $10 (around Rs 640). In case you need help in figuring out which courses you should take, you can go through the comprehensive reviews and ratings on each or simply do a quick search for blogs about it. As Udemy is a huge resource, you will find that someone has sifted through and picked the best ones for the things you want to learn, whatever it might be. The courses are mostly video based. 3. Periodic Table 2017
This is an app which will help you understand the details of every element in the periodic table. The minimalist design will make you want to browse through it and you will definitely learn something in the process. It has a molar mass calculator, dictionary of important terms and many more useful features. 4. Tiny Scanner
This is a neat app which will make sharing of class notes much easier. Instead of taking an infinite number of pictures and sending them through Whatsapp and then trying to forward and getting the order wrong, you could simply click pictures of your notes and the app will create a PDF out of them for you. While clicking these pictures, you can also correct for alignment and colour. 5. Quantum
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it” is a quote about the subject matter of this app and is attributed the Niels Bohr. While this app cannot make you ready to work at CERN, what it will do is clarify some of the basic concepts related to quantum physics. The app is great if you want to learn about something that has baffled physicists for decades and great (but slightly less so) if you want to seem impressive to someone peering into your phone. 6. Monefy
Monefy is an app to help you keep track of your expenses. Managing your pocket money is quite important and might serve as training for what to do with your salary when you start earning. You can tag expenditures and add descriptions of what you spent on exactly. The app also shows you, with the means of graphs and tables, how much you spent and on what. 7. The Indian Economist The Indian Economist is a reader for the content produced by the publication of the same name. The articles are well written and lucid and cover a wide range of topics, from economics (obviously) to culture and politics. The fact that many of the contributors are students themselves ensures that the content is always accessible and relatable. The app has a slick design with large font to make the content easy to read. 8. CAT GRE SAT Vocab Flashcards This is an app by Wordpandit, a website providing free resources, mainly for preparation for the CAT examination. This app includes a huge word bank that will assist you in adding new words to your vocabulary on a daily basis. The app functions on a flashcard system to help you quickly rejig your memory every time you see the word. 9. Quizlet
Speaking of flashcards, Quizlet is an app that lets you do much more with them. You can create your own flashcards to help you remember concepts or formulae or you can explore the flashcard sets within the app. You can also create a class in the app to share the flashcard sets you make with your classmates. Because the millions of flashcard sets have been created by users themselves, you can find sets on a lot of topics you may want to revise. There are sets with the formulae required for calculus or with facts on history or art. While this will probably not become a complete study guide for you, it will help you carry your notes conveniently within your phone. 10.
Skillz - Logical Brain Games Skillz is a game designed to improve your visual intelligence and logic through a series of 94 levels. The challenges range from tapping on numbers in a particular order to matching cards based on memory. The levels are short and fun enough to keep you playing. There is also a multiplayer version where you can test your skills against another player. 11.
My Study Life - School Planner My Study Life might just become the most useful tool on your phone if you are a student. You can enter your schedule into the app as well as the various assignments you have to complete along with the dreaded deadlines. The app is beautifully designed and does require a bit of setup initially. However, once you have entered all the details, the app will make for a handy guide to keep you organized and to avoid the stress of the academic year. 12.
TED This is a bonus app for when the motivation to study gets low. It is the collection of all TED talk videos which cover amazing people talking about big ideas and projects. If a person can invent a whole new language or transform cities and the lives of underprivileged kids using
**graffiti** as a medium for change, you can complete that math homework dammit! The videos are always, annoyingly inspiring. Even if you have encountered a momentary obstacle in your academic efforts, come back to this app. The sheer possibilities that the talks will expose you to will raise your hope in the indomitable human spirit and yourself. If all that doesn’t happen, this might still be a better way to spend your time than stalking people on Facebook.
