Category — Free Resources

If you are looking to save time in graduate school you had better get organized. i have found online tools to be amazing to get me organized. Offline organization is important as well. We will save that for another day and time. Online organization can be accomplished with some really cool tools.

Remember The Milk
Google Documents
Google Alerts
Mint.com

I utilized Remember the Milk to keep organized on a day to day basis making to do lists to accomplish goals and what not.

Google Documents allows me to keep data organized that I need for class, and other personal projects. I can share them and collaborate as well.

Google Alerts keeps me updated on news that I normally wouldn´t take the time to search for.

Mint.com helps me organized my finances in a way that is responsible and effective.

I stumbled on a great new website for students. It is called College Crunch. While not really aimed at Grad School students it appears this site is going to be a great resource for original content aimed at college students of all kinds.

With great tips on degrees,lifestyle, and technology I really look forward this to being one of those sites I visit on a daily basis.

I really appreciated this video about attending grad school. Timing is important and alot of college students are burned out after 5 years of college. This is a great video on talking about getting some real world experience first.

My professors often sent out large PDF readings for us to read/study for our courses. Enter BookletCreator. Not only does it help you organize your PDF into a booklet, it also saves paper! Just upload your file, and get it back in a book-like format. See some screenshots at MakeUseOf.

Like I’ve said before, scheduling those group projects can be a pain in the butt. Timebridge takes some of the guess work out of this by letting people suggest times to meet up according to your schedule. I would probably use this app, but not put my entire REAL schedule…just the school related one. My group mates don’t need to know where I am 24/7, but it does make it easy to see who has what class when and such. Visit Timebridge here.

Scribd is a website that allows you to upload and post documents on the internet, and allows them to be viewed in their viewer iPaper.

One of the bonuses of Scribd is that it offers unlimited storage and supports all major document formats (pdfs, docs, excel, etc). The documents can be embedded in any website, and can also be shown to other Scribd users so you can receive feedback.

Check it out here.

Website Empressr allows you to create a presentation on the web that can be embedded in your blog, webpage, or anywhere else you want it to be really. Right now Empressr is in its beta form, registration and the hosting of your presentation is currently free. This is a good alternative to paying for Powerpoint, and since it is loaded on the web, you’ll never have one of those embarrassing “Why won’t my presentation load on the classroom computer?” moments. Learn a little bit more about Empressr above.

Downloadable Firefox toolbar 8aweek tracks your wasted hours on the computer and tells you where you spent them. I always have trouble taking a "few minutes" to surf the net while I’m writing, and then a few minutes turn into an hour…you know the drill. Procrastination is not my friend! Once you figure what websites you are wasting your time on, you can block them with the toolbar, and set a timer where you can only spend a set amount of time on that particular site.

Source: MakeUseOf

I always hated group projects, mostly because it was so hard to get together with your group. And when there are five of you trying to edit a paper, crowding around the same computer, it just never works out. Co-ment is a solution to that problem. With Co-ment, you can upload your paper, track changes between authors, and each make the changes you deem necessary.

Source: Make Use Of

Microsoft recently released a number of developer tools in their new program, DreamSpark. Products include Expression Studio, XNA Game Studio 2.0, Visual Studio 2008, and Windows Server 2003. I think it’s great that Microsoft is trying encourage students to get ahead in their studies and careers by offering these products for free. In order to qualify, you must verify that you are a student once a year through the DreamSpark website.