University of Colorado at Boulder – Fall 2007

IAFS1000 – International Affairs

Web Apps for Students by Lapo Salucci

Below you’ll find a detailed, though by any means not exhaustive, list of online resources that can make you more productive in college. Best of all, almost all apps and resources listed here are completely free.

(Adapted from Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students, by Josh Catone)

Office Replacements

The web apps below will provide many of the functionality of the MS Office suite for free. They will also make your documents accessible online for sharing and co-editing.

• Google Docs & Spreadsheets Google only offers a word processor and spreadsheet but they are easy to use and can export files in many formats. Google Docs also accepts drag-and-drop citations from bibliography tool Zotero (see below).
• Zoho Office Suite. Zoho is one of the most complete online office suites, offering more tools than you'll even find in Microsoft Office's student and teacher version.
• gOffice. No frills gOFFICE has a very familiar look and feel.
• ThinkFree. ThinkFree can replace Word, Excel, and Powerpoint with its suite of online apps, and they offer downloadable versions of their software as well.

Note Taking

More and more students are bringing laptops to class. The proliferation of portable computers means that note taking doesn't have to happen with a pad and pen. The following web apps will help you take and organize (and sometime even share) your notes.

• Google Notebook More a repository /diary app than note taking. It has a plugin for Firefox though, so you can take notes and store information while you’re browsing the Internet.
• Notely Feature – rich and easy to use. Sharing capabilities, calendaring features, etc. etc.
• NoteSake. Very simple and not as feature-rich as Notely, but also very polished and easy to use.
• MyNoteIt. Feature-rich but not as polished as Notely. Nice sharing feats though.

Mind Mapping

Now you have your notes, you need to put them together. The following mind mapping/flow charting tools will help you get your thoughts in order so you can go from raw notes to polished dissertation. Both the tools below will let you export the diagrams you created to your computer.

• Bubbl.us. Very easy to use and flexible, even though somewhat limited in its features.
• Mindomo. Extremely feature-rich and polished but not as easy to use as bubbl.us.

Studying

So you've got your notes, and you have them all mapped out and organized, but you still need to fill in some blanks. There are a number of online study aids that exist to help you find the answers you need.

• CU Library - Search books, articles, and online academic and non-academic databases.
• Google Scholar - Search almost all the academic sources from one single website.
• Google News - Google News, especially with their new archive search, can be an invaluable research tool if you're researching a recent historical or current event. Google News archive search also offers a timeline feature.
• Wikipedia - Wikipedia should probably never be used for serious academic research, but it is a great "jumping off point." Use Wikipedia to get quick background info on unfamiliar subjects and point you in the right direction for more in depth study.

Bookmarking

With all that online studying you need a way to keep track of what you've read. Online bookmarking tools are a great way to do just that.

• del.icio.us - There are a large number of social bookmarking apps, but del.icio.us is king among them. If you don't like it, try Furl, Ma.gnolia, or Blinklist.
• Clipmarks - Save just a selection of a site. Don't like Clipmarks? Try Web-Chops (and read our reviews of both sites).
• Wizlite - Highlight text in online documents the way you would in a text book. Don't like Wizlite? Try i-Lighter.

Collaboration

Why study alone when you can get help from a friend? There is power in numbers.

• Facebook – This college network is mostly known for social networking (keeping in touch with friends, sharing pictures, etc.). However, Facebook can be effectively used to keep in touch with classmates, share and discuss notes, and create study groups.
• Stikipad - A collaborative wiki service that you can use to keep track of group notes on a project.
• Backpack - All your notes, lists, and ideas in one shared space. Backpack also offers an easy-to-use calendar.

Calendars

The calendar apps below might help you managing your class schedule, study time and (why not) even your social life. Some of them allow synchronization with desktop apps. CULink, your university email service, also offers a web calendar application.

• 30 Boxes
• CalendarHub
• HipCal
• Spongecell
• Yahoo! Calendar
• Google Calendar

• Do not forget that Notely and MyNoteIt have many of the feats of collaboration and calendaring tools and so does Backpack.

Bibliography

Those tools below will help you get your bibliographic references fast and embed them into your documents.

• EasyBib - A tool to take the pain out creating a bibliography.
• OttoBib - Enter the ISBN of a book, and automatically have your bibliography entry created in MLA, APA, Chicago, BibTeX, or Wikipedia style.
• Zotero - A Firefox extension that lets you "collect, manage, and cite your research sources" from within your web browser. It can also download bibliography data ‘in bulk’, locate the files of your sources, and create bibliography in your word processor (and in Google Docs).
• RefWorks – “an online research management, writing and collaboration tool -- is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies”. RefWorks is accessible when you are connected through the University network. Otherwise, you’ll have to use VPN to connect to it.