Digital tools for student life

Do you use any of the tools mentioned by the students? The tools they talk about are: Delicious; Dropbox; NVivo; MailVu; Evernote (see below for more information). Your answer may well depend on your subject area and level of your studies.

What about the tools on the list? Which of them do you use in relation to study? There are many other potential tools that could be added to the list.

As well as tools which can serve a general need common to all students (e.g. communicating with each other; preparing course work), there are others which can serve specific purposes in particular disciplines. Which ones you use will depend on your personal preferences and the requirements of your subject area. There may also be useful tools that you are unaware of.

If you would like to know more about any of the tools and their possible uses, explore the links below:
Delicious e.g. to bookmark weblinks for an assignment
Google Docs e.g. for collaborative writing of a project report
Prezi e.g. to create enhanced non-linear presentations
Facebook e.g. to stay in touch with classmates and for group study tasks
LinkedIn e.g. to develop a professional presence online
Twitter - e.g. to connect with special interest groups
Ning e.g. for a course-related group (with closed membership)
WordPress e.g. to create a project blog
Wikispaces e.g. to edit and track changes on a group piece of writing
Dropbox e.g. to store and share large digital files
Diigo e.g. to bookmark and share useful web sources for a group task
Evernote e.g. to capture and collect digital content in any media for course-related work
NVivo e.g. to deal with qualitative or mixed method research data
MailVu e.g. to record and send video clips by email - please note MailVu is no longer functional

Here are some suggested groupings for the tools. You may have allocated some to different categories according to your own use, or found that a tool can fit into more than one category:
Individual work / research: Delicious, Evernote, Google Scholar and Prezi
Communicating with others: Skype, Twitter and Wordpress / Blogger
Collaborating / sharing production with others: Dropbox, Google Docs, Ning, SlideShare and Wikispaces

Here are some possible specific uses for the tools for study-related purposes:
• Individual work / research: the tools in this group are likely to be of most use when you are working on your own both in text and other media. They include tools that can be used for note-making (e.g. Evernote); reference organisation (e.g. Zotero); source/reference locating (e.g. Google Scholar) and source bookmarking (e.g. Delicious).
• Communicating with others: the tools in this group will probably be ones to consider if you need to talk or discuss study-related matters with others. They involve synchronous voice (e.g. Skype) and asynchronous text-based (e.g. WordPress, Twitter) modes of communication.
• Collaborating / sharing production with others: these tools can help you share files in different formats and different sizes (sometimes larger) more easily (e.g. Dropbox); some are also useful if you need to work on a text together (e.g. Google Docs for writing a collaborative report or SlideShare for a joint report or a group presentation) or develop a longer, more complex text (e.g. Wikispaces). A shared private space (e.g. Ning) could be used by a larger group of students to share a range of ideas, content and media relating to a common task.