Posts Tagged ‘college homework’

Bad Study Habits Keeping You Down? Tips to Improve The Way You Study

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

At the risk of sounding like your mother – well, we know how important it is to develop good study habits sooner rather than later!  From Google Chrome Extensions to Firefox Browser Add-ons, we’ve already shared ways that technology can help you increase your productivity.  We’ve got tips to help you improve your study habits so when the college workload hits you like a ton of bricks…you’ll be ready!

alaskaval/Val

Nap time? Everyone has that time of day where work seems impossible. Your energy lags, your attention span is missing in action, and motivation is out the window.  Try to figure out when you feel the most alert and schedule your important college related activities and study time accordingly.

Time Savers. Are you always rushing to make morning classes?  Stop while you’re ahead! Figure out in advance what you’re going to wear. Gather together snacks, keys, your wallet, purse, cell phone, and laptop.  Get everything organized and ready for the day.

Jot it down! College professors will be heaping on the homework.  Assignments, study groups, or dinner with friends?  Don’t rely on your memory – write it down! Whether you use a planner, small calendar, your laptop, or a notebook, get used to writing down everything you need to do and you’ll save yourself plenty of headaches and missed deadlines in the long run!

Decisions, Decisions. It’s called time management.  What are the most important items on your to-do list?  While it might be tempting to hang out everyday with your friends, those essays won’t write themselves (unfortunately).  Learn how to juggle your college homework with studying, friends, and campus activities early on before it becomes a problem.

Got Stress? Get into the homework groove and out of the procrastination rut.  Wouldn’t it be nice having a paper done days before it’s due – instead of mere hours?  When you feel overwhelmed – take a break! Use 15 minutes to do anything but schoolwork and come back to it feeling a little refreshed, energized, and ready to dig back in!

Have any tips you would like to share?  Please, add them in the comments section below.

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Posted in College Life, Fun Stuff, Preparing for College | 2 Comments »

15 Google Chrome Extensions to Make Your College Bound Heart Sing!

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Google Chrome: sleek, fast, and easy on the eyes, the Google Chrome browser is perfect for the Google lover — and the perfect tool for the college bound!  While it may lack the pizzazz of the Firefox Browser (download themes to perk it up), it’s definitely minimalism at its best.  Simplify and work smarter with our sweet list of must-have Google Chrome Extensions for college — and beyond!

ERIO

Smooth Gestures –  Using arrows to flip from page to page?  Slow. Using only your mouse?  Fast – and fun!  Pictures display your customization so quit  playing the guessing game.  Brilliant!

StayFocusd – Compulsive Facebook checker?  We’ve all been there.  When self-control runs thin, turn to StayFocusd to back you up…or at least lock you out of your favorite time-draining sites!

Diigo Web Highlighter and Bookmark – Ever bookmark something for a specific reason and then have no idea why (or is that just me?).  Highlight the important stuff so you can easily come back and find it.  Bonus: add sticky notes to leave yourself reminders for next time!

Tab Jump — No muss, no fuss! There are a few tab extensions out there, but Tab Jump enables you to instantly see your open tabs.  It’s subdivided tabs sort recently used and most used making it easy to, um, jump to whatever tab you need!

ChromeMilk — Love Remember the Milk? Access (and add to) your to-do list from the Google Chrome toolbar itself.  While it might be a work in progress, for RTM lovers – it’s just awesome.

W.O.T. Some extensions are good no matter what browser they are on.  Enter: Web of Trust.  Internet addict?  Then you, my friend, must install this Chrome extension.  See what sites can be trusted – and what sites you need to avoid like the plague!

Shareaholic for Google Chrome – Use your time online wisely, you know, share stuff!  Instead of jumping from page to page, make it easy on yourself, and get Shareaholic installed!

RemindMe: Set up multiple reminders on a sparkling clean interface – organize or delete as needed.  Oh, and the alarm?  It’s almost musical but will still make you jump out of your seat the first time you use it.

Google Dictionary – There are all sorts of complicated words out there just waiting to trip you up.  Highlight and right click the mystery word and select the dictionary option.  How easy is that?

Download – Download a lot?  This one’s for you!  Eliminate the extra “click” – this handy button makes it easy to get into your downloads and find what you need right from the Chrome Browser.

kenleewrites

UnDoIt – Did you just close that tab you needed?  D’oh!  Reclaim that accidental closed page with the click of a button…instead of digging around in your history looking for the one without any extras.

Ad Block — Firefox’s AdBlock Plus – for Google Chrome!  It blocks ads, period. Is there actually anyone who pays attention to those pesky pop-ups anyway?  We think not.

Google Similar Pages – Make it easy on yourself. Discover Google’s idea of related pages with the click of a button.  Beta or not, it’s a promising work in progress.

Copy without Formatting – Floating button = fun in our book, but if you find it distracting, you can get rid of it.

Handy Google Shortcuts – Google Chrome user?  Chances are you’re using other Google products.  Keep Google shortcuts to Google Buzz, Gmail, Wave – 40 buttons of non-stop Google fun!

Okay, so, what did we miss?  Are there any “can’t live without” Google Chrome Extensions that we missed?  Let the world know in the comments section below.

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Posted in College Life, Fun Stuff, Preparing for College, Technology | 1 Comment »

15 FireFox Add-ons to Rock Your College World (and Increase Productivity)

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Customize your heart out with 15 add-ons for the Firefox Browser.  Streamline your college life (and beyond): get organized, remember events, increase productivity, and stop wasting time!  Choose what complements your browsing style (and what works with your version of Firefox) with a few of these fantastic Firefox plug-ins, and make your life (and the transition to college) a little easier.

FireFox. It Rocks our Socks.

monkeyworks illustration/Dave Mott

LeechBlock — Getting sucked into Reddit or YouTube when you should be studying?  Set what sites to block and when so you can work without temptation – lots of customization here!

QuickDrag – Highlight a phrase to search Google, load a URL, and more, just using your mouse!  Who needs all that typing, anyway? 

Wired-Marker – Research making you go cross-eyed?  Highlight text on a Web page and when you return…it will still be highlighted!  And, yes, you even get to choose the colors.

Tree Style Tab – Don’t you hate the way tabs go across the screen?  After awhile, you can’t even see them all.  Tree Tab Style lines them up neatly down the side.  It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s so much easier to see, trust us!

Colorful Tabs – Tabs blend in.  Make them stand out with Colorful Tabs!  Customize colors, even set specific colors for a site so you know what (and where) it is at a glance.  Best of all?  It works with Tree Tab Style!

FireGestures – Navigate web pages easier than ever – simply click and drag left to go backward, click and drag right to move forward…you get the idea.  Forget the directional arrows, FireGestures makes it easy to go where you want to go!

TimeTracker – Do you lose track of time once you get online?  TimeTracker’s handy little clock tells you just how long you’ve been playing around on the internet with various options to make it your own.

History Tree – Digging through history to find that ONE web page you need is less than fun.  This Mozilla Add-on prize winner displays your browsing history tree style so you can find what you need faster than ever!  Spend less time digging and more time doing!

Undo Closed Tabs Button – Ever get click happy and accidently exit a webpage that you actually need?  Oops.  No rummaging around in your history, just click the undo closed tabs button and get back to work (or play).

Mozilla Firefox

psd/Paul Downey

WOT Safe Browsing Tool – Web of Trust let you know if a site can do possible harm to your computer before you enter it!  It alerts you to potential nastiness and lets you decide whether or not you still want “in.”

ReminderFox — Never forget your mother’s birthday again!  Stay on top of college application due dates, financial aid deadlines, and scholarship cut-off dates with ReminderFox.  Awesome!

Adblock Plus – I hate pop-ups, you hate pop-ups, prevent pop-ups with this one!  You’ll never have to look at a pop-up again with Adblock Plus!

Down Them All! – A download accelerator and manager just for Firefox.  It’s fast, period!

NoSquint – You can’t burn any ants with this one!  Next time you pull an all-nighter and the words start to run together, you can zoom right in on what you need – even change text colors to make it easy on your eyes (red text?  Um, hello!) with this awesome add-on.

Morning Coffee – You wake up, you hit the internet, you check email, Twitter, maybe browse Digg or StumbleUpon.  Morning Coffee keeps track of (and lets you set) the pages that have become part of your morning routine.

What Firefox add-ons do you use and recommend?  Talk about them in the comments below!

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Posted in College Life, Fun Stuff, Preparing for College, Technology | No Comments »