Surprise! Students prefer socializing to studying.
Friday, March 2nd, 2007A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to be part of a small usability study which was trying to gather some information from a very small sample of SFU students (only 17 actually). I was surprised MySpace didn’t rank higher in the participants responses to general social software activities with only 2 students reporting general use of the site. Facebook on the other hand, seemed to have wide recognition and use with 8 people saying they used it regularly or a lot. Some students admitted that they used it a little TOO much in fact.
Although rather paltry, my results do tend to reflect those found at eMarketer in their recently published survey for the top websites used amongst the college going demographic.
I thought it was interesting that of all the sites they deemed their ‘favorite’, only one, (wikipedia) could be considered educational, or at least seen to be usable in an educational context. So I thought I’d post the Top Web Tools for College students list from NextPath.
Maybe next year some more of these sites will be among students favs. (yea of course wikipedia is in there.)
1) Book Finder: Over a year you can end up spending thousands of dollars on books. I am one of those poor students who struggles for money, so the less I pay for books, the better. Book Finder is a neat site/tool that allows you to compare prices on more than 125 million books for sale from 4,000 sellers. So there’s no need to go to Amazon, Half.com and all the other book sites when Book Finder can search them for you.
2) MynoteIT: If you’re a real organization freak—and by that I mean someone who irons underwear—you’ll love this app. Like the Google suite, you’ll have everything at your fingertips. But, and this is a big plus, it’s just for college students. Form online class groups, share, edit and search your class notes, plan your assignments with your calendar, and get things done with your task list.
3) Ottobib: Don’t you just hate making those bibliography pages? Although they look really simple, they can drain a lot of time out of you when you have more than 20 sources. Ottobib is a simple bibliography tool that allows you to enter multiple ISBN numbers at a time and retrieve the bibliographies in APA, MLA, or Chicago format.
4) Google Docs: Every semester it always seems that I have group projects. I use Google Docs heavily for collaboration work. I’ve had multiple papers with a partner, and with Google Docs I just give him/her editing ability on a particular document and we can write the paper at the same time while talking on AIM.5) Tada List: Scatterbrained? Disorganized? If you never can remember what homework assignments you have, Tada List will do it for you. It will help you keep track of whatever it is that you need to do and easily is accessible from any computer, wherever you are.You can create as many “to do” lists as you like, such as “homework,” “projects,” or whatnot, and then track your items via RSS. Also, for a step up try Backpack. It manages your tasks, but also allows you to set up pages to store important files, photos and the like.
6) Meebo: I am one of those tech geeks who is a computer science major, which means I have computers in a lot of my classes. I usually get bored because my teachers are slow, so I like to go online and chat with friends to keep up-to-date on all the latest things going around school, such as parties. Instead of installing chat software every time I go to class, I use Meebo. Meebo is an online instant messaging software where you can chat with others through AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messenger and Gtalk.
7) Wikipedia: Although Wikipedia technically is not a tool, it’s worth mentioning. If you have to do a term paper, Wikipedia is a great resource to get your information. I would not rely on Wikipedia by itself, but it is a great place to get basic information as well as find links to other sites that discuss the topic of your term paper.
Zoho Show: Everyone I know who goes through college has to do a PowerPoint presentation sometime in their life. Some people like to use Microsoft PowerPoint, but I am not one of those guys. With Zoho Show I can edit, import, create and publish PowerPoint presentations online.
9) Google Reader: Talk about information. One of the main reasons I am in college is to learn, but there is so much knowledge out there that it is just hard to keep track. With Google Reader I can easily keep up-to-date on the latest news.
10) Del.icio.us: This social bookmarking site allows you to have all your bookmarks in one place and to share them with other people. The advantage to this site is that I can access my bookmarks on ANY computer. I Del.icio.us all of my college courses’ Web sites and tag them with the course name and semester date (i.e. gatech and spring07).