Tag Archives: apps

App Tuesday

App Tuesday: 10 Textbook Apps

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textbook appsAny college kid or soon-to-be college kid needs an arsenal of textbook apps to help them shop for the best bargains, find the free ebooks and textbooks, and sell and trade when the semester ends. These apps should fit the ticket. But don’t wait until the fall of freshman year to download them. There’s no time like the present to create a folder and start adding these 10 textbook apps to your mobile devices.

1. BigWords

Nobody likes shopping for textbooks at the college bookstore.BigWords operates by the premise that students prefer to shop for textbooks on smaller and smaller computers in the palms of their hands and like to shop using their smartphone or tablets. They claim to help students about $1,000 annually on average.

2. Chegg

Chegg brings you millions of textbooks and solutions packed into one glorious app! Rent textbooks, get instant access (when available), and read eTextbooks on your iPhone, iPad or iPod and Android devices. The app allows students to easily search for textbooks by title, author, ISBN or by scanning a barcode. Rent or buy physical textbooks and while the book is on the way, get 7-day FREE instant access to the eTextbook to get started on classwork immediately.

3. Kno

Experience your same books, only smarter. The Kno™ app, now a part of Intel® Education, enhances the learning experience by bringing content, from one of the largest eTextbook catalogs in the industry, to life with interactive features that drive student engagement, and learning success in the classroom. The added features allow students to synchronize all content and notes across all devices. With over 70 features, Kno allows students to create flashcards, search for answers within the books instantly, watch videos and bring external content into the books.

4. CourseSmart

The CourseSmart eTextbooks app is a perfect complement to a CourseSmart eTextbook subscription. Students can benefit from the advantages of mobile learning–leaving their backpacks and laptops behind. The key features include: access to eTextbooks for quick reference, a keyword search to help locate information, synchronized notes and highlights along with a true digital equifalent of your textbook.

5. BuyBackTextbooks

This app makes selling back your old books & textbooks both fun & profitable. How it works is this; simply install the app and then grab some books you want to sell. With the app you can easily scan the barcode on the back on the book, once it beeps their system goes to work. In a matter of seconds you’ll see how much each store will pay for the book.

6. Cash4Books

Sell used books and college textbooks with the Cash4Books.net app. Scan book barcodes and get instant Cash4Books price quotes from anywhere. Have your books shipped to them for free and get fast cash back. Get a free quote on any book or textbook.

7. Half.com

eBay’s app helps students quickly find great deals on textbooks (and more fun stuff of course) heading into the school year. It’s the second eBay app to integrate barcode scanning technology and allows users to scan the barcodes on items to find the best deals on textbooks, DVDs, video games and more. The app provides Half.com buyers access to over 80 million active listings from more than 700,000 sellers. Half.com also uses the “Buying Wizard”. Based on the user’s criteria for item condition and seller feedback, the Buying Wizard identifies the lowest cost items and shipping discounts (if applicable) to help shoppers get the best deals on Half.com.

8. CampusBooks

With the free CampusBooks apps, everything you love about CampusBooks.com’s powerful money-saving search engine and price-comparison tool is now with you on the go! Wherever you are, you’re just a few touches away from finding the best deals when buying and selling textbooks. The app finds the cheapest books when buying, gets the highest prices when selling, in-app barcode scanning, and uses GPS tracking technology to display local results.

9. Yuzu

Yuzu™ by Barnes & Noble lets you organize, read, and annotate your textbooks right in the palm of your hand—making the experience of learning simple, gratifying, and much easier on your back. Go to the Yuzu store to find your textbooks and download them to your iPad®. You can also access them using an internet-connected Mac or Windows PC. That way, you’ll be able to follow along in class on your iPad and pick up where you left off on your home computer or even in the campus computer lab.

10. Kindle

The Kindle app is optimized for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, giving users the ability to read Kindle books, newspapers, magazines, textbooks and PDFs on a beautiful, easy-to-use interface. You’ll have access to over 1,000,000 books in the Kindle Store plus hundreds of newspapers and magazines. Skip the campus bookstore and search for the best book bargains on Amazon.

 

App Tuesday, technology, test prep

Vocabulary.com and the App

 

vocabulary.comSince this is App Tuesday and I’ve been focusing on apps that help students with college prep, I came across a website and an accompanying app that make learning vocabulary not only productive, but fun. Vocabulary.com uses the following methodology

  • 1. Answer a few questions

    They created more than 120,000 questions designed to help you learn words

  • 2. We build a model of your knowledge

    Their magical technology models your brain. The more you play, the more they know about your vocabulary knowledge.

  • 3. They predict which vocabulary words you don’t know and teach them to you

    Get a question wrong? They will schedule Review and Progress questions so that you’ll learn the word, and won’t forget it in the future.

  • 4. You learn useful words and improve your vocabulary

    Track your progress as you quickly master the words that are essential to success in an academic or business environment.

It’s that simple. You can also access vocabulary lists from great literary works, historical documents, speeches, the news and vocabulary lists for test prep.

It’s Like a Personal Trainer for Your Brain

They use their own adaptive learning system to ensure that you get the right question at the right time. They build a model of your vocabulary and abilities as you answer each question, and then serve you up with questions that are not too hard and not too easy. From the results of these questions, they determine what words to focus on in your personalized learning program.

A Personalized List of Words Just for You

As you answer questions, they begin to compile a list of words to learn. If you get a question wrong or choose to use a hint, the word is added to the list. Once they add a word to this list, they keep working with you until you’ve mastered that word. You can see your list by clicking on the My Progress tab on the top of the screen.

Vocabulary.com-The Appvocabulary.com

The Vocabulary.com app, a perfect tool to access at any time, is your personalized adaptive learning game. The dictionary was written for humans, by humans. Look up a word, and you’ll read a friendly explanation that you’ll actually remember. It’s as if your favorite teacher were explaining it to you. They include clever usage tips and thousands of real-world example sentences that’ll show you how words live in the wild and will make you more confident about using them yourself.

If that’s not enough, vocabulary learning becomes an addictive game. Accumulate points, achievements, and badges while competing against your Facebook friends, your classmates, or other members of the Vocabulary.com community.

Check out their website AND the app for iOs or Android devices. For just $2.99 it’s a bargain and an investment for the future. Use both the website and the app to build a strong vocabulary for not only test prep, but to prepare for the rigorous reading and writing in college.

 

Scholarship Friday, scholarships

Scholarship Friday: 5 Scholarship Apps

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scholarship appsIn today’s world of smartphones and tablets, parents and students are doing more on more with mobile applications. Recognizing the need to access easy information, app creators are designing scholarship apps to help with the scholarship search and application process.

Scholarship Advisor – FREE

Finding the right scholarships can be overwhelming. This exclusive Scholarship Search (powered by StudentAdvisor.com) is a mobile app designed to make it easier to find money for college. Browse their hand-picked lists on topics including academic, athletic, health care, military and more. Discover unique, relevant scholarships you never knew existed. You can easily search, find and even apply for millions of dollars in scholarships right from your device. Easily add important dates to your calendar – never miss a scholarship deadline again!

Scholarships.com – FREE

Whether you’re just starting your financial aid search or have already enrolled at your dream school, Scholarships.com can help you wherever you are in your academic journey. Search their database of 2.7 million local, state and national college scholarships and grants worth over $1.9 billion. And since college is expensive enough, all of Scholarships.com’s tools are free for you to use.

Scholly – .99

Scholly is an easy way to find scholarships for high school seniors, current undergraduates, and graduate students. Designed to ease the scholarship search process, Scholly’s adaptive matching engine promises to deliver smarter, targeted lists of scholarships. Scholly seeks to fix the current outdated process that requires students to fill out long, tiresome forms and then fail to deliver relevant results.

Scholly gives students a curated list of scholarships. We don’t waste student’s time with random scholarships that they do not qualify for nor do we give them a list of things that are not even scholarships like loans, internships, and advertisements. Deadlines are updated as soon as they are available and scholarships that no longer exist will be removed from our database. Scholly’s goal is to make the scholarship search process as simple as possible.

This app receives high ratings in the app store.

SAIL Scholarships – .99

(Also available on GooglePlay)

This app was created by college graduates to help students find scholarships. Their goal was to dramatically decrease the amount of debt students have after graduation by creating this app to help students search for scholarships. A quick glance at the app says that it’s easy to use and sort awards. It hasn’t been rated yet by iTunes or GooglePlay and I’m not sure how extensive their database is. It’s up to you whether you want to risk the .99.

RecruitU – FREE

If you are searching for athletic scholarships, this is app can help. Whether you’re a boy or girl, RecruitU is designed by experienced college coaching experts to direct your search to your ideal college sports programs. With our comprehensive U.S. college database, RecruitU will match you (or your child) with the perfect college based on your academic (GPA and Standardized test scores) and athletic skills (level of play). Once RecruitU generates your best college matches, you can immediately send an email to the coaching staffs at these schools with your athletic and academic profile (including a link to your game video). The app also connects you to their online recruiting sports network.

Do you know of any other apps available? Leave a comment below to share with our readers.