School is around the corner, and here are the must have apps and gear for school, from notetaking to organizing your classes. Check out below to find out what you should have in your school kit!
Evernote is the king of notetaking, and it’s got so many uses, from managing tasks to saving your recipes. It’s great for taking notes at school, as you can sort them in notebooks, and tag them as you see fit. It also allows you to search your notes, including your handwritten notes that you have scanned in, such as PDFs and other paper you’ve scanned in. Evernote allows you to go paperless, and makes sure you’ll never lose that important letter again.
Drafts 4 is a great app, that is your first port of call when you want to do anything with text; from making a tweet, to writing an essay in markdown. Their motto – ‘Text Comes First’ – is certainly true; Drafts starts up in less then a second, and the amount of action you can do with it is amazing. I recommend you check out the Drafts 4 action directory to see what sort of action you can create. Don’t know what actions are? Check out this blog post.
One of my favourite uses of Drafts 4 is to make school notes quickly and efficiently, involving Evernote and Workflow (discussed below). You can check out a blog post I wrote on it here.
Workflow is one of the most powerful apps for iPad I know of. There’s a lot to go through, but luckily I have written a post on it which you can check out here. In Workflow, you create Workflow’s, which are basically things which you double tap and run, and they save a ton of time.
GoodNotes is a great app that allows you to use a stylus or your finger (though it’s obviously better with a stylus) to take notes. It’s great for maths and science classes, when typing simply won’t do. Paired with an Adonit Jot Script (which is discussed below), it’s a must have if you like taking notes by hand.
Adonit make great styluses, for both taking notes and for drawing. My stylus of choice is the Adonit Jot Script 2 – mainly because I have the Pencil by FiftyThree for drawing, and it came with 6 months of Evernote premium – and it’s great. I’ve had it for over two years, and it still works perfectly, looks great, and is just brilliant to use. Check out the Adonit site here to see their range of styluses.
MindNode is a powerful mindmapping tool for iOS and for Mac. It’s very powerful, and has tons of export features. The mindmaps that come out look great, and it’s a must have for anyone who loves mindmapping.
Things – Price Varies
Things is a great todo manager for Apple devices (Mac, iOS) that allows you to schedule your todos’ This one aspect is crucial to me as a student, as it allows me to make my todos have both a due date, and a date when I want to do them. The Cultured Code site explains it very well, and Things is definitely worth the money.
By far the best planner I have found for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac, iStudiez Pro allows you to add your assignments, class schedules, tests and much more all in one place. The website explains it all very well, and it also offers a sync service, meaning that you can synchronize your timetable to all your platforms.
Forest is a great iOS, Android and Chrome extension that stops you from getting distracted. You start to grow a tree, and when you switch app or go on a blacklisted website, your tree dies. It’s a great app and it actually works. You can create an account to sync your forest with all your devices, and it also gives you some in-depth features. I really recommend you check it out.
So those are my back to school apps and tech! I would have included apps like Textastic, however they are quite specific apps to the course, whilst these apps are useful to everyone.
I hope you liked the post, and thanks for reading!
