Presentation highlights how students can use apps for learning

Apps for Education was presented to a group of about 50 students Jan. 28 in the College Union. The presentation showed students the many smartphone apps they can use to help them along on their academic journey.

There were 16 apps in five different categories presented by OCCC faculty and staff.

Those included storing, studying, surfing, styling and sharing.

The storing category included Keeper, an app that keeps all of your passwords in one convenient location.

“You just have to know one of your passwords by memory …” said English Professor Angela Cotner.

Dropbox also was included in the storing category. Dropbox is a cloud storage application students can use to save files, said Jason Cimock, instructional technologist.

“With Dropbox you actually never have to use a flash drive ever again,” Cimock said.

Darby Johnson, student learning coordinator, introduced students to Cloudon.

She said the cloud storage app is similar to Dropbox with the big difference being that students can start Microsoft documents inside of Cloudon.

“(However)… it does not have every single (Microsoft) feature available for free,” Johnson said.

Another app highlighted at the presentation is Quickoffice, an app students can use to edit Microsoft Documents such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint in a hurry.

“It’s not full Microsoft office,” Cimock said. “You cannot do everything in Quickoffice that you could do in Word … .”

English Professor Pamela Stout introduced students to Evernote, an app that helps students create notes and manage them.

“You can create notes in it, [and] you can share notes with other people,” Stout said.

For the studying category, the apps presented were Songza and Studyblue.

Stout said Songza allows students to select music based on the activity they are participating in at the time. Playlists are recommended for different activities.

Studyblue is a tool that students can use as an alternative for handwritten flash cards.

Students can create their own cards or find notes and cards from other students.

“It’s going to prioritize results from other students [who] attend OCCC and have taken that particular course you’re searching for,” Cimock said.

Many other apps were presented, including Puffin, Springpad, Flipboard, Pocket, Skitch, Paper, Haiku Deck, iMovie and Book Creator.

Cotner encourages students to download these apps and use them to their advantage.

“I think that students should take advantage of this because it allows their phones and iPads to be useful in school … ,” she said.

Most of the apps are available for Android and iOS devices, and some are even available in website format.

The majority of the apps are free, have a free version or are less than $5.

For more information about Apps for Education, or the apps listed above, call Cimock at 405-682-1611, ext. 7459, or email at jcimock@occc.edu.

To contact Lauren Daniel, email editor@occc.edu.

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