NANDIPHA DILLA
Our generation is permanently glued to our phones and we use them for basically everything. Perdeby has put together a list of essential apps and websites to make your university life easier.
Namola
As a first year student you will realise that freedom is one of the best parts of university life. It is considered essential to explore the nightlife that Pretoria offers, but as the onslaught of human trafficking and kidnappings were reported across social media in the beginning of 2017, it is imperative that safety precautions are taken.
Namola is a free app that helps you receive emergency assistance when you need it the most. When you need help, you click the app open for emergency assistance from trained control centre operators who are ready to deploy the correct emergency responders to your location using your phone’s GPS locator.
Tuks Timetable Assistant
Unfortunately, the days of being handed your carefully planned timetable by your teacher at the beginning of the year are over. You will have to create your own timetable from scratch using information that is individual to your course and the modules you are enrolled for.
The Tuks (formerly Chylls) Timetable Assistant was created by a group of first years as a programming project that was then developed to accommodate the needs of all university students. You can go to their website to use the program and customise your timetable in half the time you would to create it manually.
CamScanner
We don’t always have the luxury of being able to access everything we need when we need it, especially when important documents are involved. With electronic copies making our lives easier since faxing, having access to a scanner can be crucial.
CamScanner uses your smartphone’s camera to create authentic scanned documents anywhere at any time that can be saved in PDF format and then emailed to anyone who needs the documents.
Forest: Stay Focused
We all struggle with procrastination and for many, smart phones are our biggest distraction. We all know you can take a five minute break and scroll through Twitter and get lost in a rabbit hole of Youtube videos. In the end, we are our own greatest enemies and this can really affect how well we do when it comes to handling due dates throughout the year.
Forest is an app that helps you stay focused by blocking access to your phone while you plant a virtual tree for the amount of time you want to study, one that dies as soon you exit the app. This tugs on incentive to stay productive as you watch your tree grow when you look at your phone screen, keeping you from chopping it down for Facebook.
Wunderlist
You will definitely need a to-do list at university. Within a space of a week there will be times where you will have practicals, year assignments, marked tutorials and semester tests sprinkled in between all your other activities.
This app is the best to-do list application that you can invest in with features such as categorised lists, objectives within to-dos, collaboration, calendar sync and both phone and email notification. You will not miss a single thing with Wunderlist.
Image: Sally Hartzenberg
