I recently got myself the iPad Pro and have been trying out different apps that have become super handy with helping me finish the semester strong. I wanted to share them with you because whether you are in high school or have been a student at Iowa for a while, these apps will greatly help you!
Here are my top three:
- Procreate
Hello, productivity… I love to use procreate to make myself weekly to-do lists. It’s a great, customizable app that allows you to make your to-do lists to your liking. I like to design mine with a layout of the entire week, so then I know what I have to do, and what big assignments I have to complete! Everything is at your fingertips, and the customizable feature is so nice that it makes you actually want to cross everything off your list!
- Good Notes
There are lots of great note-taking apps for the iPad, but this is definitely my personal favorite. In the past, I’ve been a huge advocate for having binders for every class, so it was hard for me to make the transition from paper to technology. I’ve always been super organized where I would separate the binder based on my class structure—lectures, homework assignments, essays, etc. I was never able to find anything that quite matched my organization level but in technology form, until I came across this app. I have all of my classes in separate digital folders with each class being organized differently as I would normally do in the binder. It’s phenomenal because now anywhere I take my iPad, I have all of my classes with me! Plus, once I graduate, every class I have taken will be on the app. The feature of Good Notes I enjoy the most is that it connects to the Apple Pencil! I learn better when I write rather than type, so having the ability to write lecture notes, work notes, etc. is a non-negotiable for me.
- Mindnode
In college, you learn more information at a quicker pace, compared to what you’re used to in high school. A lot of the time all of the information you get just ends up being barfed onto a sheet of paper, all jumbled, not a lot of organization, and messy. Mindnode is a way to take all of that information and make it into mind maps. In case you don’t know what a mind map is, you start with a topic—for example, the philosopher Epictetus—, and build off of that topic—one of his major beliefs is that humans are not insulted by things, they are insulted by their judgment of that thing—, so on and so forth. It’s just a big mapping of a topic pretty much; but it’s an amazing way to stay organized, review all of your class information, and begin to understand the concepts. I specifically enjoy this app for Principles of Microeconomics and the Meaning of Life. I tend to get overwhelmed with the amount of information I get in these classes, so it’s nice for me to have space where I can jot everything down based on the topic it relates to.
Obviously, there are so many more amazing apps you can get to help with your studies, but these are my absolute favorite because I use them every day. The organization within all of them makes it much easier to be productive and achieve amazing grades. Different things work for different people, but if you are someone who has felt overwhelmed with the amount of information you have learned this semester, these are definitely some apps to look into!
Quote of the day: “Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity–not a threat”. ~Steve Jobs
Have a beautiful rest of your day!
Heather :)