Back-to-School Toolbox For Students
Written by Mark Family WebWatch | Fave FWW | Subscribe to FWW
It’s that time of year when parents are celebrating and the kids are depressed. Yes: it’s back-to-school season. To help them get off to a great start, I’ve collected some online services meant to help them get and stay organized with their studies.
Note takers
What’s the key to good grades? I’m sure we’d all agree note taking is a critical skill for sure. You may recognize some of these from an earlier post here, but they’re so appropriate to this topic I just couldn’t pass them up.
Notefish – Just make annotations on a Web page and they’ll be there when you return. You can even share with others. It requires an add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer.
Google Notebook – One I use quite often, this add-on is quick to get to and is flexible to allow me to organize the way I like it. If you’re maxed out on add-ons, then you can still use it, but you’d be losing a bit of the power it provides.
Studicious – more than your average note-taker tool, but this one does the trick, for sure. You can share notes, automatically link note keywords to Wikipedia and Google, you can even store documents and to-dos.
mynoteit – Something that was just suggested to me is this nifty tool. It, too, has a nice batch of features: calendar, notes (duh!), bookmarks, and more.
Office Applications
College is expensive. Can I get an “amen”? Adding software can make the price tag go even higher, so why not try these freebies? The plus side to all of these is that they’re compatible with Microsoft. Can I get another “amen”? 🙂
Ajax13 – create presentations, spreadsheets and drawings. Yep, even word processing is part of the pack. They all look and feel similar to Microsoft applications, thus reducing the learning curve.
ThinkFree – the grandaddy of online apps, this one continues to improve with age. And in case your student has some extra time on his hands (and why not if he’s going to be all the more efficient using these tools?) he can collaborate with other students on documents easily, and store their work on a generous 1GB account.
Zoho – when you visit this site you’ll think Christmas has arrived what with all its offerings: a project management tool, a notebook, a wiki, chat, planner, web conferencing, and a few others. Most are free, but some have the option to upgrade to gain more features.
Google Docs and Spreadsheets – As the name implies, Google has a rather nice free alternative to paying big bucks for Microsoft counterparts. It also has a cool calendar, which is separate tool all its own.
OpenOffice – one of the first ones to go up against Microsoft, you’ll find all the heavy hitters to Word, Powerpoint, Access, and Excel. The difference here is that you can download OpenOffice right to your desktop, which will come in handy for laptop users who can’t find an Internet connection (are there really places without that?). I’ve seen this set of tools used in businesses before so you know they have to be good enough.
Organizers
I think it’s safe to say that behind every good student is a good organizer. Each has their own way of doing things, so one of them is sure to fit your student’s personality and study method.
HipCal
This little hippo has got it all: calendar (group sharing too!), to-do list, address book, and alerts that can be sent to your email inbox or cell phone.
Backpack – just like the name implies, this backpack packs the essentials: notes, lists, writeboard, and reminders, all of which are free. Pay a little something to get the calendar added, if you want. Very easy to use. Add list items in a flash and reorder by drag-and-drop.
30Boxes – no logo on this one, but it only goes to show you that they’re really more about functionality than glitz. You login to a full-size calendar that fills your screen. But what I also like about this service is its to-do feature. You can quickly add to your lists and add tags to them while you’re typing. This means that you can save yourself a few clicks AND find your stuff easily in the future.
Kiko – Keeping track of class schedules and homework is easy to do with this little niche on the Web. Powerful features make it easy to add events, notes to those events, reminders, labels, contacts to attend, and lots more. Did I say contacts? Yes, as a matter of fact I did, which means you can store contacts for easy storage. Rolling over an event gives you a quick pop-up showing you the important details of that even. Wrong date? No problem, just drag the event to the right day. Yes, there’s group sharing, too, for those study groups.
Organized Home Printable planners – not much for keeping your schedule online? No worries because printing out your schedule still has a purpose. This site offers you a variety of pre-made planners for easy download and printing.
Bonuses
FutureMe – No matter how organized your student is or will become, there’s certainly going to be a time when they forget something. This service can help them plan ahead and have an email sent to them as a reminder for whatever they need to be reminded about. Just enter your name, email and message. Then enter the time you want to receive the email, and boom! – you’re reminded when the time strikes.
Spambox – who doesn’t hate spam — the email variety? Well, students don’t need to sift through all the junk in their email inbox, so to help them keep their junk to a minimum, this service helps protect their true email address by providing them (for free) a temporary address that sends messages to the email of their choice.
Diigo – a bookmarking service with punch! Not only can you save your bookmarks, you can also add notations to any Web page you visit. When you return, they’ll be there waiting for you. But there’s more. You can share your bookmarks with others, tag them for easy retrieval, and even save copied content from the Web pages that you’ve viewed all within your account.
Clean Up Your Blog
In our recent Comment Friday, I asked “Does the design of the blog matter?” 35 yes’s later, it’s time to clean up your blog!
Limit Your Widgets
If you are running 10 different widgets, it’s time to narrow it down. Make a choice between mybloglog and blog catalog, they are essentially the same widget anyway. If a particular widget isn’t giving you any results, take it off. It will be easier on the eyes.
Remember you only need one button for your RSS Feed. By having one, potential subscribers can “pick” what they want to subscribe to your blog with. You don’t need to list 10 different buttons for all possible readers.
3 Columns Can Get Messy
A 3 column blog can work, but you have to make it work. Having excess amount of widgets and banners can easily make your blog look sloppy and unorganized. If your blog isn’t easy to navigate, then it can easily get overlooked.
Related Advertising
Slapping various banners on your sidebar and labelling it “advertising” isn’t going to work. One, people are going to be less likely to click an advertisement, once they know what it is. Second, it looks bad.
The key to advertising is doing it without looking like it is an ad. By having clean, related advertising, it will look like it’s another part of your blog, rather than a huge advertisement.
If you need personal help on how you can make your blog look more “professional” free free to contact me and I can give you some pointers.
And The Winner Is…
They are the winner of the laptop briefcase from Eco-Handbags.
I want to thank everyone for participating and a big thanks to our sponsor for the great prize.
Website Design
Our last comment friday had an overwhelming response at how important the design of a blog is. It can take a while to learn how to design your own website. That’s where Dev3 – Web Design Services can help.
Website Design and Developement
Whether you are looking for a new website design, or a boost on your SEO, Dev3 can provide service for you. To see what kind of work they do, you can look at their portfolio. Even on their homepage is a list of their latest projects that they are working on. There is about two dozen websites to look at. It gives you a real good indication on what they can do for you and your website.
How Much is it Going to Cost?
I am more interested in their SEO services, so I have requested a free quote. This sends an email of what you want and they will give you a quote on what it will cost. They state that SEO starts at only 50$, that sounds good to me!
6 Spanking New WordPress Plugins You Haven’t Seen
WordPress fans might have heard about the WordPress Plugins competition held at WeblogToolsCollection blog. Out of the 30 entries (+6 that haven’t submitted their final code), I have chosen 7 WordPress Plugins that I think are really useful for enhancing WordPress functionality.
Let’s see what they are and why they made my list in no particular order.
- WordPress Automatic Upgrade
This plugin will be a welcome relief for a lot of bloggers who are jittery about upgrading their WordPress installations. Even for the seasoned bloggers, the steps offered by this plugin is nice so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to do a little thing in between an upgrade.
Read through the linked page to understand how it works before you start upgrading with this plugin. A backup before an upgrade is still highly recommended. A clear winner for making WordPress upgrades blogger friendly. - OneClick Install
A second plugin that is going to make self hosted WordPress installations more popular among bloggers. With this plugin, you just point to a URL or a downloaded zip file of a theme or a plugin and it installs it in ONE click! How cool is that?
Plus, check out these neat features:- Forget the hassle of ftp-ing, unzipping theme & plugin files
- Comes with a Firefox extension to do this – forget going to the Dashboard
- Helps non-techie bloggers as well as people with Firewall restrictions
- Updates itself
- ContactNG
ContactNG is simply a contact form done right. A contact form is essential for any blog and there is no reason it should look shabby. Use skins of your choice with this customizable form, even generate your own buttons. It sports intelligent and unobtrusive anti-spam features. Comes with support for the language plugin, Polyglot. - MyDashboard
If you have used Netvibes or iGoogle like interface, you’ll love what this plugin does to the WordPress Admin interface. You get gadgets that you add/remove, drag and drop and rearrange, change skins and if it’s your cup of tea, add your own gadgets with the API. It comes with standard gadgets that mimic the standard information in the Admin Panel like LatestComments, LatestPosts, IncomingLinks, etc.
I am looking forward to seeing more community developed gadgets for MyDashboard with the API provided with it. - WP Plugins Tracker
Another usability plugin that helps plugin management. Anyone who has been running a WordPress blog will know the hassle of finding out if the plugin they have is up to date or not. This plugin lists in a nice visual list of current version and the latest version of all plugins (including inactive) installed in your blog. Only caveat is that the plugin has to be listed in wp-plugins-db.org repository. But, I found that 90% of my plugins were indeed listed. - Simple Tagging
If you like tags, you are probably using, the very able, Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin. Simple tagging addresses UTW’s shortcomings like poor performance, absence of auto-complete as you type, tag management, feeds for tags, etc. Check out the full list for an array of impressive features offered by this plugin.
Check out these plugins as well as the others in the list. I picked out the ones that will be most useful for a majority of bloggers and the rest are not inferior by any means.
Use the comment section to sound off your thoughts and if you like any and why you like them.
I write about more technology related topics at ShanKri-la – where technology meets daily life!. My goal is to make your life on the Internet a little bit easier, a little bit manageable and a little bit more enjoyable.
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Two Easy Ways to Reduce Spam on Your Blog
We get dozens of spam messages everyday. I have found there are two great ways to reduce spam messages on your blog.
Plugins
Askimet is the default plugin to help you fight spam. However, I personally use Bad Behavior.
Bad Behavior has blocked 914 access attempts in the last 7 days.
One of the features that I like about Bad Behavior is that all new commenters will have their comments set in moderation before they are approved. After they get approved once, you don’t have to approve them again (unless they change their name).
Close your Comments
I never really thought about this until recently. Ironically one of our most spammed blog posts is Why Is It That People Send Spam Still?
With several spam comments a day on that particular post, I decided to close the comments. That way the post wouldn’t get anymore spam.
It’s really easy to do. First go to edit on the post you want to close the comments to. Right under the categories section there is a discussion tab. Uncheck the “Allow Comments” and save. That’s it!
This is also a great thing to use when finish a contest. That way people can no longer enter. I did this on several of our contest pages.
Comment Friday Winner: Life of a School Bus Driver
This week the topic was how important the design of a blog is. Personally, as long as I can read the site and navigate through it well then I don’t care much. However, I do agree that a unique design can turn on a visitor. Since the post I have been helping out Home Mom to clean up her theme. If you are gonna use loads of widgets and banners, try to narrow it down as much as possible. I will also be writing a post about this.
We got a great response on this question. Everyone pretty much agreed design is important, so if you are waiting to do a redesign of your blog to have it be more catchy, I would suggest pushing it to the front of your “to-do” list.
We’ve never had someone else get “votes” for being the blog of the week. When Brooke voted for Jennifer to be the blog of the week, I definitely couldn’t award it to anyone else. Jennifer blogs at Life of a School Bus Driver and several other blogs.
I am actually trying to sell some text links for her blog, if you are interested please contact me. I can run some great rates and offer some nice incentive.
Blogging for Alzheimers
Blogging has become a powerful way to raise money for diseases and charities. Whenever I see a blog promoting something that I can contribute to I will do so gladly. This type of thing isn’t a usual topic on our blog, but I thought it was important.
The Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk is the nation’s largest event to raise awareness, support and funds for Alzheimers. The event is held annually in hundreds of communities across the country. Since 1989, the Memory Walk has raised more than 225 million dollars for the cause!
I checked the location nearest me and they are doing a San Diego Memory Walk on October 27th. It’s a 3 mile walk and that particular one has raised over 18,000 dollars already!
To increase that total, they need more Team Captains. A Team Captain puts together a team of fund raisers, sets a goal, and gets to work trying to earn donations. I personally don’t have time to be a team captain, but I fully intend on making a donation. If anyone who reads this and decides to become a team captain, I will make sure you get a donation from me. I could just see going broke!
Check out where there is going to be a memory walk near you!