Lorinda Marrian and Alycia Hibbert
Every month, Perdeby tests and reviews apps that we think will make life a little easier. This month, we tried out apps that can help you through the upcoming exam period.
Evernote
Rating 4/5
Evernote is the perfect way to store and organise all your class notes in one simple platform. The app allows you to create notes and store them in different virtual notebooks. The notes can be created in a variety of formats that include audio files, text notes, hand written notes and photos. The best feature of the app is its ability to synchronise itself with other devices and accounts. You can synchronise the app with your laptop so you can easily upload notes onto your computer and take clips from websites to add to your notes. The app also synchronizes with Google Drive so you can add additional files from the drive. It is recommended that if you are going to make use of the handwriting feature to use a tablet, with a stylus so that the notes are not messy. The main shortcoming of the basic version of the app is that it has a 60 megabyte upload limit that only resets every 30 days. However, the premium version has a 10 gigabyte upload a month which can be very useful. Therefore, you may have to plan exactly when to upload. Even so, this is a really easy way to organize all the loose notes that you made throughout the semester.
Exam Countdown Lite
Rating 3/5
Exam Countdown Lite allows you to easily organise your exam timetable while also letting you know to the second how long you have until the exam starts. The app is fairly easy to use, all you have to do is add the exam time and date. You can pick from a list of icons and colours to customise the exam tab to make exams easier to distinguish from one another. The app also has the ability to send notifications to your friends so that you can make them panic when they see that you only have one hour left until the exam starts. Unfortunately, the app does have a few drawbacks. In order to get multiple alerts over a range of time periods, you would need to download the premium version and the app does not have the ability to synchronize to your existing calendar. Nonetheless, this can be a very useful app for those of us that are disorganized and who need the extra pressure to study.
HabitBull
Rating 3/5
HabitBull is an app that concentrates on tracking habits and keeping you accountable through notifications. The app can be used to track your study habits to make sure that you can make the most of your time during the exam period. The app features, other than reminders, discussion boards, motivational images, fully customized options that let you track up to 100 habits, and it includes no advertisements or secret costs.
The app is easy to use, encouraging you to keep habits in an extremely accessible way. It features built in categories of habits from drinking water daily all the way to encouraging you to read more, you can also create your own habits and categories as well. The app is diverse and accessible in the way that it creatively allows you to keep track of habits. You can pick how long you wish to keep a habit, colour code it and view graphs and statistics on how well you are doing.
The discussion boards are interesting as well, some habits are very intimate, but is creates a sense of encouragement, and advice within the community with those trying to break the same habits. The app is user friendly and accessible, however, it lacks anything to set it apart from its competitors.