We all have a phone. We all use them during school. We might as well use them for something useful and productive.
Thinking of buying your student a smart phone for Christmas? Hoping it will somehow change their school experience? My mom sent me this article shortly after this semester started. I got a smart phone just before school, and I was pretty excited at the suggestion that this piece of technology could help me stay on top of things. I have an Android Galaxy S, so I was only able to try two of them out.
First off, let’s tackle Evernote. My first encounter with this program was it’s inability to download itself. Kind of important, wouldn’t you think? Assuming I could somehow get it to work on my phone, (I just tried again and it downloaded) I need to create an account. I’m guessing this app requires connection to a server since you have to log-in with your account every time you use it. Other than that, it’s a pretty cool app. You can take pictures of the board, of your homework, of whatever and put it into your notes. I find taking notes on my phone kind of bothersome, but if you’re any good at it, then I suggest this app for sure! It looks nice to boot!
Remember the Milk is the one I used more. It didn’t last very long. I have an Android Task Killer on my phone (whenever I click on the green dude, it kills all the apps that I’m not using but are still running) which pretty much doubles my battery life. This creates a problem with Remember the Milk since it has to be running to work. And by running I mean a cow pops up on the top of the screen when you have something due. A cool thing about this app is that you can put it as a widget. I had it next to a picture of my niece on my third screen. Remember the Milk is pretty much like the calender that comes on the phone. I didn’t use it for long. I will say this: I miss the picture of the cow. (Sorry Evernote! Remember the Milk’s icon just happens to be bigger!)
Out of the two, I would go with Evernote. However, we all have different minds that require different methods of organization. You may end up liking Remember the Milk better. I ended up using a small notebook to write an ongoing to-do list. Lucky for me, both of these apps are FREE!
The Fire 