Monday Motivation: Top 10 Web Apps for Students

Web Apps: They’re not just for the iPhone…

We were browsing our awesome new website when we came across this news article about Web Apps for Students. In the interest of getting the word out to grad students, we decided to reprint the article’s list. If you get a chance, be sure to read the entire article for more information on learning how to use these and other Web Apps.

So, what are web apps and why do we think they’re especially important for grad students? Web apps are one of the neatest things to be invented since sliced bread, and if you’ve never used them, you’re missing out! They add features to websites, make doing repetitive tasks  (like bookmarking all of your research) easier, and have other helpful functions that you can’t get elsewhere. In other words, they can save you lots of time, which is your most valuable asset in graduate school. The fantastic staff at the Addlestone Library have come up with this handy list of their Top Ten Web Apps for Students:

Keeping in Touch with Family and Friends:

• Brightkite geographic social networking  – Brightkite is about connecting with the people and places around you. The application can help you spend more time with your friends, show you new places and introduce you to people in your neighborhood.
• Skype – With Skype’s free software, which works seamlessly with your internet connection, you can chat away and never worry about cost, time or distance.

Finding Information/Library Resources

• Amazon/Library Catalog search plugin – The College of Charleston Library/Amazon.com Catalog Mashup plugin allows a user who is on Amazon.com to compare the books they are browsing with the holding in the College Library’s catalog. In addition, the plugin will also check PASCAL holdings to see if one of our lending partners has a copy of the title. If no title matches are found in the College’s catalog or in PASCAL the plugin displays a link for the Interlibrary loan request.
• LibGuides Facebook app – download research guides directly from Facebook – LibGuides is the first library application available within Facebook. A user simply needs to select LibGuides from the list of applications in order to access LibGuides content. LibGuides will recognize the user’s school affiliation and present them with their “home” LibGuides system.

Personal Productivity, Working Collaboratively and Managing Time

• Google docs – A source to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. You can also upload existing files and share with others.
• StudyStack – Find data or use your own data to create printable electronic flash cards that you can use online or export to a cell phone or iPod

Collecting and Organizing your Work

• Zotero – a Firefox extension to help you collect, manage and cite your research sources

Creating Multimedia Presentations

• Creative Commons – find licensed images or music files that you can share, remix or reuse for presentations
• VoiceThread – Offers free and subscription accounts. A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents and videos and allows people to comment.
• Microsoft’s Photosynth – Allows you to create interactive 3-D images out of a bunch of photos of the same scene or object.

If you like these, then you should check out the Literacy, Information, Technology, and Education (L.I.T.E.) Workshops @ Addlestone. This semester’s theme is “The Top Web Apps to Help With College Life.”  Just Register here to attend, and before you know it, you’ll be zipping around the web like a seasoned professional.

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