School is hard. Between papers to write, tests to study for, projects to finish, and trying to actually have a social life, there’s a lot for students to do. There’s also a lot of software out there that promises to make things easier - unfortunately, a lot of it can break a student budget. Fear not, though, there is help!

Students have a lot of needs when it comes to technology, and thankfully, there are free solutions to most of them. From security to socializing, I’m going to walk you through the essential software for students to keep their schoolwork and schedules on track.

Security

AVG by Grisoft makes an excellent suite of anti-malware software. There are three programs in the suite: AVG Anti-Virus Free, AVG Anti-Spyware Free, and AVG Anti-Rootkit Free. They work well, update automatically, and you don’t have to worry about your subscription - and your protection - running out.

As for a firewall, ZoneAlarm is a great choice, free for personal and charitable use. When a program tries to access the internet, ZoneAlarm pops up a message requesting access – if you don’t know whether to allow it or not, ZoneAlarm will offer advice about what to do.

Web Browsing and Email

For web browsing, you should get Mozilla Firefox. It’s free, it has thousands of extensions to do anything you could possibly want to do with a web browser, and it has security features built in. If you don’t do anything else, get rid of Internet Explorer. It’s a magnet for viruses, spyware, and just about every other kind of security problem that exists.

While you’re switching to Firefox, check out Mozilla Thunderbird for email. It does everything Outlook does, and like Firefox, has great extensions and built-in security.

Office Applications

Eventually, you’re going to need to write something, or create a spreadsheet. Instead of paying $300 for Microsoft Office, get OpenOffice. It does everything that Microsoft Office does, and it’s completely free.

Likewise, why settle for the restricted features of Adobe’s Acrobat Reader? Get Foxit Reader instead – it’s faster, it lets you do things Acrobat doesn’t, and it’s free.

At some point, you’re probably going to want to do some image editing. You can shell out hundreds for Adobe Photoshop, or you can get The GIMP, a free, open-source alternative. GIMP can be a bit less intuitive, but once you learn to master it, there’s not much you can’t do with it.

Calendar

If you’re going to keep your schedule together, you’ll need a calendar. Paper calendars are great, and it’s a good idea to have one for those times when you can’t get to your online one. However, there are a lot of positives to online calendars: email and text-message reminders, guest invitations and RSVPs, group sharing, and of course, being able to access it anywhere in the world. When it comes to online calendars, Google Calendar is my favorite.

If you like having a desktop calendar program, I recommend getting a Google Calendar account and downloading Mozilla Sunbird, a full-featured calendar program that integrates well with GCal. If you’re using Thunderbird for email, you can get Lightning, a great calendar extension for Thunderbird.

Chatting

There are a lot of great services out there for chatting. MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Google all have their own services. If you’re using them all, you should consider a multi-service client like Pidgin.

You can log into all your IM accounts through Pidgin and save the system resources used by running several different clients.If you want the ultimate in chatting, though, you should go for Skype. Not only does Skype provide user-to-user and group chats like the other programs, but it offers free user-to-user VOIP phone calls. You can even have large conference calls with groups of Skype users, anywhere in the world. Skype also offers plans that allow you to call landline phones, and to receive calls from landlines; in some cases, you can have your whole year’s phone service for less than you’d spend for two months with regular phone service.

Online Applications

There are some great online applications out there for students as well. Google offers a whole library of services, including Google Scholar, Google Book Search, Google Earth, Google Translate, and the previously mentioned Google Calendar.

For note-taking, NoteSake is an excellent online application. NoteSake lets you take your notes online, share them with others, collaborate with groups, organize them, and even provide copies to others who weren’t in class.

If you’re learning a foreign language, Mango provides free online language courses. You can choose from eleven different languages, with more to come. Mango is a beta release, however, so don’t be surprised if you find the occasional cucaracha.

Justin Ryan is a freelance writer and technology consultant. He is the News Editor for LinuxJournal.com and a regular blogger for Wisebread.com, where he writes on technology, personal finance, and savvy living.

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Facebook has become a major distraction for university students around the world. There is just so much happening at any one time that all thoughts of assignments and study get thrown out the window. This has happened to me on many occasions. But there are some applications you can use to help increase your productivity, and get more things done in the long run. Instead of writing messages to friends, turning people into vampires, and throwing food at others, these Facebook apps are some of the best on the web. For educational purposes that is:

1. Class Notes - If you happen to miss a lecture, then the class notes application may save you a lot of time and effort. This is basically a directory of photos of class notes, lecture notes, and anything else that was displayed at your courses. So, you just have to hope that someone has uploaded the information you are missing, but with over 1700 users that may be very likely.
2. Cheap Textbooks - All students wish they could spend less money on textbooks, and with the ever increasing cost and size of textbooks, a way to reduce this cost will become very popular. In comes Cheap Textbooks. Simply type in the title of your book and you will be shown the compared costs between over 30 online bookstore. This could save several hundred dollars a semester. And who said Facebook was a distraction!
3. Hey Math - Throughout the world most people consider maths to be their most hated and hardest subject. It can be so complicated that you are completely lost, but it can also be logical and rational. With the Hey Math widget you can finally start to understand some of the most difficult mathematical concepts. Hey Math is a library of mini movies that “visually explain hundreds of difficult maths concepts.”
4. Zoho - Zoho Online Office allows you to collect all of your documents, spreadsheets and presentations in one place online. From here you can share them with friends without needing an offline copy. With this app you will never again be restricted by the difficulty of emailing your work around. I think I will keep an offline backup as well though… just in case.
5. Ask Questions, Get Answers - If you are having difficulty with any of your uni work, then using this application, simply type in your question and sit back and relax as you wait for any answer. Basically, Ask Questions, Get Answers allows you to post questions and answers to anyone in the Facebook community. A great time saver, but only if there is someone who knows the answer.
6. Easy Bibliography Generator - Have you ever been concerned with which format of bibliography and references to do? There are dozens of different styles that could be used, and are needed depending on the scenario. Thankfully, this Easy Bibliography Generator can format your references into MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian. This can be a time saver, but only if the format you need is there, otherwise you are on your own!
7. Notely - Notely is possibly one of the best student based online tools available, and it is now on Facebook. This system is a virtual homepage for any university student. It allows you to post to-do lists and shows which ones need to be done first. You can upload notes, write notes, set up a calendar, and pretty much anything else that you have ever wanted in one place. With this single application you can transform Facebook from a distraction into a study hub!
8. Docs - Simply put, Docs is a library of uploaded schoolwork. There are over 50,000 documents available from lecture notes, to problem questions and everything in between. Even though they claim to try and deal with plagerism, I have no doubt that there would be a significant quantity of that going on within this app, yet with nearly 10,000 users I’m certain that there is a lot of useful information available.
9. Scholarium - Scholarium is a combination of several other applications into the one system. You can view your friends timetables, rate your professors/lecturers, and find classmates with who you share courses. This could be very powerful, but it is still quite new and has yet to gain much momentum.
10. To Do List - A simple, and yet powerful tool for any student. You can add to your To Do list, see which ones are approaching, and cross them off when completely. While this is a great start for any student, I do not see why there needs to be a facebook application for it. Surely it can be done much easier just with a pen and a piece of paper.

As you can see there are dozens of great applications to turn your facebook profile into a machine of productivity and achievement. The only problem is that these to could become distractions. At least you now have an excuse for spending mass amounts of time there!

It is true that there are dozens, if not hundreds of distracting applications on facebook that can make you forget about assignments, ignore exams, and skip classes. I know this from experience… a lot of experience! Actually, it seems like I spend a lot more time on there than I should, and the problems are these three applications:

1. Roshambull - A massive online Paper, Scissors, Rock competition with over 100,000 players. You can bet on each game, and eventually build up your credits. The main part of the game is to increase your rankings by beating your friends, as well as dozens of random players. I am currently the number #1 in my university, and in the top 500 in the world.
2. Vampires - Build your vampire by attacking other vampires, and increasing your vampire army. This can get very addictive, especially if you start to get into the higher levels. This app also has over 150,000 vampires, so you are never short of an opponent.
3. Pirates vs Ninjas - Who would win, a pirate or a ninja? This is one of the lifelong questions that everyone will ask themselves from time to time. I am a ninja man myself, but pirates are not far behind.

So, in conclusion. If you want to increase your grades, add the first 10 applications, and stay away from the last 3 applications. This is one of the major battles that any student will face, but you must stay strong, and focus on your studies. Stay motivated and determined!

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This is another part of The Student Productivity Week. For the full list of articles see the overview, or at Scholastici.us.

Textbooks. No matter what way you look at them, they are a pain. They are heavy, expensive, and hard to understand. Everyday I see people struggling around their universities piled under a load of huge books.

This does not have to be anymore, thanks to the internet.

There are now a large collection of books available directly over the internet – no heavy lifting, no large debts. Simple!

The hardest part is to find these places, but look no further. Here is a list of the most important, easiest to access, and in general the best sites on the web. Here are Books on the Web:

Classics in the History of Psychology – Containing over 25 full books, and hundreds of articles, if you are a psych student you will never be lost again. For example, say you are looking for information about Sigmund Freud. Simply type in his name, and there you have it:
Psychopathology of Everyday Life, The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, The Interpretation of Dreams, and many more. All in full text for you to read instantly.

The Online Books Page – This is a directory of places you can download texts from. For example, type in Jane Austen, and there are dozens of places from which you can view the full works of Jane Austen. There is just so much information available at a click of the mouse.

eBrary.com – With more than 20,000 books, eBrary is virtually the perfect online book source. Unfortuantly, it does have a $5 sign up fee, but surely that is worth the price. Rather than purchasing textbooks, there can be a major saving for this online library. For my own sake I typed in the keyword ‘Thermodynamics’ and there were over 1500 results!

Google Books – Google had the bright idea of trying to insert every single book ever written onto the internet, unfortuantly they have not quite met my expectations. You are only allowed to view a view select pages of any one book, before being forced to buy it to see the rest. There are only a select few whose copyrights have expired, and you are allowed to download for free.

Project Gutenberg – Any book thats copyright has expired is available for free download from Project Guenberg. Some of the most popular books of all time are available here, as well as hundreds of others. With more than 20,000 free books, it is no surprise that some of them include Pride and Prejudice, Ulysses, Huckleberry Finnk, and The Iliad!

Hopefully this list will allow you to save several hundreds of dollars every year, especially if you are studying English Literature or something similar. Forget about lugging huge books to every class when there is such an easy and cost effective method available.

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Please thank Cal Newport for this guest post. I will be writing up a post at his blog, Study Hacks, very soon. Cal is also a successful author, with two books entitled: How to Become a Straight A Student, and How to Win at College.

A Surprising Discovery

To research my second book I devised a simple plan. I would choose 50 students, all of whom had high GPAs, from a variety of schools and majors. Each student would besubjected to a tedious interview that extracts every last littledetail about their study habits.

My assumption was that each student would have his or her own custom-built toolbox of tactics. I would pick and present those that seemed most interesting.

But my assumption was wrong.

As I began to collect and review my interview material I kept stumbling across pieces of advice or strategies that appeared again and again. Even more unexpected, many of these repeat offenders were strategies I too had devised as part of my own academic turn around. I soon developed an astonishing theory: When it comes to making straight A’s, there seem to be a collection of universal laws— common strategies that almost any student who sets out to improve his or her performance will ultimately stumble upon. Like the laws of nature, they are fundamental.

One of the most prevalent of these straight-A laws, and arguably the most important, is the following:

The Quiz-and-Recall Method

Most students study using rote review. The method is simple. Collect all of your notes from both lecture and reading assignments, then read them silently to yourself, again and again, as many times as you can tolerate before you become overwhelmed by fatigue.

Conscientious students start a day or two in advance and are able to review everything several times. Less conscientious students wait until the night before — and are often still rote reviewing up to the literal last minute before the test. Indeed, the word “cram” can be defined as: “rapid rote reviewing.”

The straight-A students I interviewed did not do rote review.

In fact, they despised rote review because they could correctly identify its inefficiency. As any cognitive scientist will tell you, silent reading is a terrible way to retain material. Your mind wanders and the material is retained at an abysmally low rate.

Here is what straight-A students do instead:

1. They collapsed their notes into clusters which I call big ideas. It doesn’t really matter how they decide this grouping, it’s enough that clusters are somewhat consistent.
2. They assigned a one-sentence prompt for each big idea. For example: How do Gibbon’s ideas contrast with the scholars of the early 20th century?
   
3. For each prompt, they attempt to lecture out loud, as if talking to an imaginary class, the main points from the corresponding big idea. They do this without looking at their notes. If they are successful, they move on. If they had trouble, they put a checkmark next to the big idea.
4. After the first pass, they take a break, and then repeat, only focusing on the big ideas that got checkmarks. After this run-through, they repeat again, focusing only on the big ideas that still gave them trouble in the second pass. And so on.
5. This continues until they finish a pass with no checkmarks.

I call this the quiz-and-recall method. And it’s incredibly effective.

Two things to notice:

First, for some reason, lecturing out loud makes concepts stick in your mind. Once you explain an idea, it has a way of intertwining itself in your neural pathways, and refusing to let go. Once is enough— you’re going to remember that material. The same doesn’t hold true for rote review. You can read over a set of notes 10 times and still forget the important ideas by the next morning.

Second, by only focusing, on each pass, on the big ideas that gave you trouble in the previous pass, you’re eliminating wasted time. Ideas you are familiar with get a minimum of time. Tough ideas get the most time. In essence, you minimizing the time required to learn every last idea.

It’s Like Magic

Students who trust the quiz-and-recall method report that its effectiveness is almost eerie. A common experience for me, using this technique, is to sit down for an essay exam and find myself able to remember, almost word for word, arguments from lecture that I ingrained using q-and-r. Needless to say, the resulting essays (and grades) were strong.

This is a simple change. But it’s devastatingly effective. If you change just one thing about how you study, consider making the crucial switch from rote review to quiz-and-recall.

This controversial topic of the various methods of study has caused me to create the following poll. Answer it anyway you see fit:

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For the past few weeks Gideon Addington and I have been working hard to produce a week of the best posts about Student Productivity. Everything from textbooks, to resources, and online applications will be covered in detail with one post a day alternating on our blogs. Stay tuned for a lot of great tips in the coming week as we delve into the future of university student’s ideas about productivity, procrastination and time management… as well as some great facebook time-savers.

Day One:

Beyond Wikipedia - 20 References You Can’t Do Without

Day Two:

Books on the Web

Day Three:

The Full System - Note Taking, Scheduling, and Studying

Day Four:

The 10 Best Facebook Apps for Students and 3 to Avoid

Day Five:

6 Facebook Apps for Students (and everyone else!)

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GPA or Grade Point Average, is the one deciding factor that compares the quality of your work with your classmates and ranks you accordingly. The higher your GPA the better. But sometimes it is much harder to increase this simple number than it first seems. Thankfully, there are some simple steps you can take to boost your GPA. Pick the Brain has provided a few tips on this very topic, but I have found a few more that prove very useful.

John Wesley’s original 7 tips include:

1. Go to class - You would be surprised how often this is not followed. When you get to university you will learn that nothing is compulsory, and none of your lecturer’s will care if you go to their courses or not, so it is extremely difficult to stay focused and motizated.
2. Sit in the Front Row - Not my favourite place to sit in a class, but it will get you involved, and make it easier to learn more.
3. Take Notes by Hand - I am a massive supporter of this idea. I don’t think that you learn as easily just by following through printed notes. Actually writing the information down engages a different part of your brain, meaning that you are thinking about the concept and memorizing it at the same time.
4. Do a weekly review - I have never tried this, but I suspect that it would work well. Most of the time you do this automatically however, whenever you are studying for an exam or preparing an assignment.
5. Go to office hours - Again, I have never tried this, because I do not think that intruding on a lecturer in their time is of any benefit. If you have any questions, just ask them during your classes or directly afterwards.
6. Find smart people to work with - Working through questions, and analysing key concepts can be a great way to fully understand the topic you are studying. It is for this reason that I encourage everyone to get a mentor. Someone older who can help you out, but have a smart fellow student in your same course can often be just as good.
7. Avoid all-nighters - All-nighters are not the most pleasant experience, but most of you will do at least one of two in the next few years. Sometimes they are unavoidable, but I would try to eliminate them as much as possible.

My three additional thoughts on how to increase your GPA are of a different thought process, but are still highly valuable.

1. Take easier courses - Make sure they are related to your major, but taking a few easy courses is a great way to boost your GPA. You just have to make certain that you will score extremely highly in all the assignments and exams. Remember, most courses are weighed the same, so a quick, simple course can be a great way to increase your GPA.
2. Focus on the important assessment - It can be very irritating, but it is often the case that some of the least important assignments in terms of marks can be the hardest and take the most amount of time. Try to focus on the assignments and exams that will have the biggest impact on your overall grade.
3. Remove distractions - Acquiring a high GPA can mean a lot of study. This is a very hard thing to do for many people, so you must help yourself out as much as possible. A good way to do this is to remove all distractions from your study area - TVs, computer games, mobile phones…

Having a high GPA can mean a lot when you are trying to get your first major job, or if you are trying for scholarships and academic awards. Often it is not easy to increase this number by a lot, but it is worth a try!

It’s very difficult to keep yourself focused when studying for an online degree through an online education course. You can consult from encyclopedias and dictionaries i.e. german english dictionary or the online french english dictionary to take help in your studies. Always choose the best online courses offered by a reputable institution like the University of Maryland.

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When you leave home for the first time, and start going to university, there is one thing which you can never be prepared for - the number of colds and illnesses you will get in your first year. It will seem that every week you willl have another kind of flu. You will catch anything from coughs, the sniffles, sour throats, stomach bugs, and everything in between. While this obviously has the actual symptoms, it can also have a big impact on your academic results.

You cannot choose when you will catch a cold, so they could come at the worst possible times. I know that I have caught a cold during Mid-Semester exams, final exams, the day before an assignment is due, and dozens of other times throughout the year. It is for this reason that you need to have a fully stocked supply of antidotes, lozenges, and various other drugs.

This is a small list of all the things that you will use, plus some that you should use:

• Vitamin C Tables
• Throat Lozenges
• Pain Killers
• Bandages
• Various Different Kinds of Head Cold Tablets

I hate illnesses and colds! This is definetly a scenario when the saying ‘A prevention is better than a cure’ applies. Try to eat healthy, excercise, and stay out of the cold. Hopefully if you follow all of these tips you will be able to stay healthy throughout your university life.

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Cal Newport has posted a very insightful post recently titled Productivity is Overrated. While many people will argue against this idea, Cal does have some interesting arguments:

• Being productive does not make you accomplished.
• It does, however, make being accomplished less stressful.

This leads to the idea that accomplishing your goals is not about productivity at all, but is driven by determination and passion. It may take a little longer in the end, but if you are focused on your hopes and dreams than you do not need to be organized or very productive to reach them.

Having watched many documentaries on some of the greatest minds of the Twentieth Century, I have noticed that they majority of them do not follow many of the productivity tips shared here - they are messing, and unorganized. But what makes achieve all of their goals is a driving passion that consumes them.

Remember that productivity is not the most important thing in accomplishing your goals, but it could easily halve the time it takes for you to reach them.

[And for anyone who was wondering, the picture of the tomatoes symbolizes organization]

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