“I like the iPhone’s dictionary – if you don’t know the meaning of a word on a website you just have to tap on it to get its meaning. So simple and easy.” Anibul
The dictionary was added for iOS 5 and it is important to just tap and hold on a single word to see the ‘Define‘ menu appear beside ‘Copy, Select All and Speak’. It does not work in all applications. In messages the complete message is highlighted on tap and hold but you can use Copy and use Speak.
“I use Google Scholar to search for materials and useful information for my studies and find this can lead to reading other papers as a result of the links to similar articles. It also helps when you want to cite a paper as it gives you the layout for the citation.” Katherine
The iTunes U app from the Apple Store has lots of open courses. It is very useful for my studies – you can listen to the course at the same time as looking at the slides in iBooks.
Henry – Web and Internet Science
It works on an iPhone and iPad – you need to register on the Apple store. Many of the courses are American. ‘Internet Economics’ as a lecture is an example from one of the courses and you have a podcast plus slides from Stanford University – “Future of the Internet by Ramesh Johari” You can speed up the voice up to 2x, pause the lecture and return to it later and rewind in short steps.
“I have a Kindle – it means I read books anywhere even at times that I can’t carry extra books!” Andrew
The smallest and lightest 6 inch Kindle 4 allows you to download Word and PDF files, has an onscreen keyboard controlled by the middle 5-way controller button, dictionary and built in wifi for downloading books or other files. Font sizes can be changed but there is no text to speech.
“Before going to sleep I usually make a black on white PowerPoint presentation of the readings I have finished. I write the most important ideas – no more than five sentences per slide; 20 slides max! While lying in bed and listening to my music trying to fall asleep, I read the slides which takes about 10 minutes – it is a lot easier to memorise what I have read during the day using this small trick.” Taha – ITO course.
“I watch open course videos to improve my knowledge or to help me to catch up with my classmates. I do not find some of the uni notes good enough so the online videos are the best help and they often come from Oxford, Cambridge and MIT etc.” Linda
The links to Oxford, Cambridge and MIT show a range of options from podcasts to a YouTube channel and a web page from MIT with links to more sites. There are also many websites that have lists of courses, videos or podcasts and they often use the acronym ‘MOOCs meaning Massive Open Online Courses for example