Developing good study habits is important for every student. Given the opportunities provided by various digital tools and software, doing so is easier and more fun than ever. Here are seven ways to help you leverage technology to study smarter.
One way technological progress has changed our world is by making education more fun and interesting. Today, there are many educational applications available on app stores on the internet. These applications can be games or informative files that help us organize our studies and work toward our goals. Here are just a few of the learners should check out:
Such apps are changing the traditional learning paradigm, using the principles of mobile learning to enhance standard schoolwork to make it more interactive. For instance, instead of having to read through bulky textbook chapters, you might want to play educational games on Kahoot!, say, which could teach you the same concepts while at the same time giving you new words to enrich your vocabulary, in such a way that you won’t even notice that you’re actually learning. That way, learning would be as fun as it should be, and you’d also have a higher chance of retaining difficult material in your memory.
Nowadays, we don’t have to buy expensive physical textbooks because, at many universities, you can download your eBooks from digital libraries, as well as academic papers, journals, and other informative papers by googling information. Students should use official sources to get their data. Examples of this are Google Scholar, a free database with many articles and journals that are easy to get. This site enables you to try new topics and find reliable sources to include in your essays or assignments. However, if you do not want to search for good academic paper sources, you can simply pay for a research paper online. You can outsource your research to experts who won’t just find credible sources for you but also help you cite them properly.
It’s important to plan out your schedule. With technology, you can use so much more than a spiral-bound planner. Online calendars, like Google Calendar, can sync to all your electronic devices and remind you ahead of time when assignments are due and when you’ve scheduled the time to study or do anything for that matter. You don’t need to constantly check your calendar because it will alert you well in advance. Having to remember fewer things will allow your mind to feel more at ease.
Everybody knows that studying by yourself can be a challenge. It can also be very lonely. In such cases, technology comes to the rescue. If you can set up a Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting, you can start or join a virtual study group with your fellow students. Using such platforms, you can share your screen, write notes together, have simultaneous discussions, and even watch YouTube videos within the meeting without leaving the window. Group study sessions no longer require a physical venue. Online ones run more efficiently, and you can spend less time studying in a group than studying alone.
You no longer have to dig out separate pages in your notebook to find each individual nugget of information. With Evernote or Microsoft OneNote apps or any other popular digital note-taking tool, you can organize your lecture notes into folders and sub-folders, making things easier to find. You can also search for text, even in images, and easily tag or make notes. With your writings saved in the cloud, you can make them accessible on any device, meaning you can study wherever and whenever you want to. This is just one of the cases of how technology can be helpful for education – click here to learn more. If you haven’t tried digital note-taking solutions, give them a go ASAP.
If you are trying to study without digital intrusions, installing a productivity aid such as Forest or Cold Turkey that blocks distracting sites and apps can work like a charm to keep you focused. This can be helpful during times of intense studying, e.g., while preparing for finals or working on a major project.
Some topics are best remembered by both hearing and seeing. Tools that record lectures or enable you to create voice memos can be tremendously useful in providing you with another point of recall. You can re-watch a recorded lecture or listen back to a voice memo that you’ve taken from your keywords and phrases to reinforce your commitment of those key facts to memory in a different medium – offering you a break from your usual methods of working with reading-based revision.
You aren’t just becoming partial to technology by adding these things to your study routine; you’re taking advantage of what these tools have to offer and maximizing your capacity for learning in 2024 and beyond. While each tool offers distinct advantages, from adding an organizational touch that helps with prioritization to making a study session feel like a video game, it’s clear that integration of these tools into daily learning will only increase as the new year progresses, bringing even more exciting ways to learn. The best solution remains one that blends traditional studying techniques with these modern advancements in order to create a balanced study routine.
Author: Philip Richardson
Philip is a technology expert with a passion for EdTech solutions. He loves helping educators incorporate modern technologies into classrooms. He hopes to see a future where every lesson is a fun experience for students.
