Optimise your student life with these online resources
Mon 19 December, 2022
Settling into university and getting on with your work can be a challenge so here are the best apps and websites that will help you be on top of your game in terms of organising you’re learning as well as taking care of your mental health.
Note-taking
We've all taken notes and never looked at them again right? We either lose them or forget about them, don't reflect on our notes whatsoever. However, there are many applications designed to make note-taking worthwhile. Here are a few:
I'm sure you're already familiar with both of these as you already have access to One Drive via your student email and may also already have access to Google Drive via your Gmail account. Both of these applications will allow you to sync all your files to other devices and you can create dedicated folders to organise your files to your subjects and units.
A multipurpose productivity software where you can think, write and plan all in one space. Notion is customizable to your needs, providing many features which you can choose or not choose to use that will make note-taking and revision all the more productive.
StudySmarter is a website that allows you to upload lecture slides and notes where you can write questions with multiple-choice answers to test yourself as well as create flashcards about the content you're studying.
For those of you who like mindmaps, Taskade is for you. It is a website that has many features to help you take notes alongside a mindmap feature.
A PDF editor that allows you to take a picture of your textbooks and upload it to the application as a PDF. You'll be able to annotate your textbook pages with ease with features that will let you highlight the page, write over it and even edit the actual text.
Weava is Chrome extension that lets you highlight text on websites and lets you write notes about them and saves them for you to look at and organise later.
Reader view is a Chrome extension that enhances the readability of your websites by getting rid of any visual distraction on websites and allows you to change the font and font size of the text as well as change the colour of the background. Another amazing feature is that you can edit text right on the page through its design mode as well as add you're own notes which you can then save and download as a PDF or print out.
Organisation
Life can get chaotic. It can be tricky keeping track of everything and making sure you've done everything you need to do. Planning out your day, week or month and allocating designated times to certain activities will provide structure to your days and make life feel less hectic.
Tweak is a simplistic to-do list app which acts as a weekly planner and allows you to create tasks which you can drag and drop to different dates if in need of a change and it syncs across devices.
A holistic calendar app dedicated to organisiwith your life in accordance to your circadian rhythm, setting reminders to eat, sleep, take breaks, study and whatever other task you've set yourself. The app can sync with your device calendar and even has a social aspect where you can view your friend's schedules and see their plans.
A habit tracking app that helps you develop new habits, remove yourself from bad habits and overall set yourself goals and reminders.
Momentum is a chrome extension which showcases a to do list and reminds you of the tasks you need to-do.
Self Care
Being mindful of your mental and physical health is incredibly important. Don't slave your days to just working. Always make time for your well-being, to reflect and to have a bit of fun.
F.lux is an application that reduces and increases blue light on your as the day progresses to protect your eyes.
Eyecare is a Chrome extension that will remind you to rest your eyes away from the screen when you've stared at the screen for your selected time interval.
A self-care app designed around the Greek philosophy of stoicism. The app checks in with your mood for the day, allows you to journal about your day and thoughts through free form or around a provided prompt, and provides meditation and breathing work alongside other exercises to help regulate and understand your feelings.
Aloe bud is an app that covers most aspects of self-care from hydration, to social life, healthcare and more. You can select which aspects you want to reflect on and be sent reminders about.
A self-care Chrome extension that checks in with your mood every day by picking an emoji and lets you write a small note about why you're feeling the way you do. The extension has a dashboard you can visit that shows all the moods you have recorded. It also has a meditation feature and a journal prompt feature.
A fun little app that will let you document your uni life. Every day the app will prompt you to take a 1-second video which will accumulate until the end of the year where you can turn all your 1-second videos into a film to showcase your entire year and reflect on it.
Other useful resources
There are many fantastic resources that can't be assigned to a category but are still incredibly useful.
Calculations can be hard and vary over subjects. Omnicalculator is a website that contains a collection of calculators for every subject that you can browse through and select or search for the specific calculator you require.
A text-to-speech Chrome extension that reads aloud any text you've highlighted on a website at your chosen speed.
These digital writing assistants can analyse your texts and offer improvements and critiques about your writing. Grammarly also comes with a Chrome extension that can proofread your work as you're typing.
Slack is a communal project management site perfect for group projects or work with your friends that allows you to communicate with each other, assign due dates, and objectives, create vision boards and even more.
A website that provides crisp diagrams about the human body system and comes with quizzes and templates to assist your knowledge - perfect for medical students or anyone else who needs to know about anatomy.
An app that lets you learn computer science and coding on the go by letting you fit short learning lessons for when you're on the go or have a busy day. You can set goals for daily learning sessions that require you to type up code and answer questions.
Student Communications Team
We are the student communications team at The University of Bedfordshire. It's our job to let you know what's going on around the University and give you useful advice about how to get the most of your learning, wellbeing, future, and student life.
Latest University News
