10 iPhone Apps to Get You Back to School

By: Stephanie Marcus
From: http://mashable.com/

As August nights get cooler, we begin begrudgingly counting down the remaining summer days. Once Labor Day passes, it’s back to school time for millions.

The best part of going back to school is clearly the shopping. Even though a new notebook can go a long way in preparing you for the new year, the iPhone () also has a ton of apps that will help to get you organized and in the right mind-space to focus and learn.

Last year we brought you 10 awesome applications and now we are updating and adding to that list, ensuring you have a smooth transition when returning to those hallowed halls.

From the college-bound to those who are still lucky enough to enjoy recess, here is a list of the best back to school apps.

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1. Open Culture

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Going back to school can be a shock to the system. You’ve probably spent the last few months relaxing, hanging out with friends, or transitioning from summer job mode. Hours of classes, papers and assignments can be rough, so to get yourself in a more intellectual space, you can check out Open Culture, which gives you free access to a huge selection of educational and intellectual audio and video collections.

Because acing school often has to do with time management, this app can really help you out in the multitasking department. Choose from a decent list of classics available as audio books while you do your laundry or hit the gym. The “Ideas and Culture” option has a lengthy list of podcasts and radio shows that will tune you into some striking commentary and analysis from some of today’s most interesting thinkers. There is also access to free university lectures plus foreign language lessons and scientific tutorials; as if you didn’t have enough to deal with.

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2. Mental Case

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Those first tests are but a few weeks away, and it’s up to you to make studying for them as easy as possible. For $4.99, Mental Case lets you create oh-so-handy flashcards on your iPhone. If you’re still leaning toward making them out of paper, then the added bonus of being able to record audio and insert images to the cards may sway your thoughts.

In addition to making your own custom flashcards, you also have access to FlashcardExchange where you can choose from over 21 million cards on a huge range of topics.

If you’d rather not spend all your time studying from your phone, you can download the flash cards to your computer.

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3. Rate My Professor

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A professor can often make or break a course. Some love teaching and really bring excitement and innovation to the lecture hall, while others have sleep-inducing voices and read straight out of the textbook. Rate My Professors is a useful app in deciding what courses you want to try to get into and which ones you should probably ditch before the add/drop period is over.

While versions of Rate My everything — from teachers, to doctors to dentists — have existed for years, this app is a great way to let other students know when your prof does something great or should just be avoided. You can tweet or post the messages to Facebook (), but use caution if you plan to publicize a bad review.

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4. myHomework and iStudiez Pro

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myHomework and iStudiez Pro are two apps we have reviewed before, but we simply can’t leave them off this list. myHomework is a free app that will help you stay afloat amidst the sea of assignments you’ll have to tackle.

Color coding helps you keep track of assignments in different classes, and when they’re due. If you are a great organizer, you can use the app to intricately plan how much of each assignment you want to accomplish and by what date to really keep you on track. The app has been updated since we last reviewed it, and you can now view your homework in a day or calendar view, as well as send homework reminders to friends.

iStudiez Pro is a paid app ($2.99) that will help you keep track of your student life. Here you can track your class schedule, so you aren’t missing lectures and ending up at the wrong end of campus, and you can also color-code each of your classes with their corresponding assignments, and be notified of their due dates on the apps calendar.

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5. Free Translator

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French class may be frustrating, but it’s not hopeless. Free translator is a great way to help you learn another language, as you can discover words that are more relevant to your life.

This app supports a ton of languages, so you even if your school doesn’t offer Polish or Korean lessons, you can learn a few things on your own. It also won’t hurt to have it handy when your French teacher calls on you in class.

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6. Chegg

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So this probably isn’t news to anyone entering or already in college; textbooks are expensive. Even courseware, which is often a compilation of photocopied texts, can run you hundreds of dollars. Since you probably just dropped a ton of cash on tuition, why not try and save some money where you can without sacrificing your education?

Chegg is a free app that does just that. It’s a textbook rental company with millions of titles to choose from, which is a real bonus considering you don’t have to brave the school book store and stand in line for hours.

You can search for your book by title, author or ISBN, or simply scan its barcode. The app is hellbent on saving you money, as you can compare Chegg’s rental price to the retail and in-store prices, so you know you are getting the best deal.

Since it’s a book rental app, you’ll have to part with the books eventually, which means you have to remember to return them. With all your work, that might be the last thing on your mind, but thankfully the app will send you gentle reminders so late fees don’t ruin the value of the service.

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7. Blackboard Mobile Learn for iPhone

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Blackboard is a platform that many schools use as way to communicate with students, as well as posting their grades and assignments to private student accounts. Many teachers and professors will direct their students to head to Blackboard to view next week’s lecture notes or find the link to a required reading. Having access to the platform on your phone can make keeping up with your assignments so much easier.

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8. Quick Graph

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For many of us, math is just not our thing. Those who get it and love it will probably adore Quick Graph, a graphic calculator with 2D and 3D capabilities. It’s also capable of displaying explicit and implicit equations as well as inequalities in both 2D and 3D, in all standard coordinate systems: Cartesian, polar, spherical and cylindrical. You can also share your results via e-mail or you can save them to your photo library.

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9. Formulus Free – Formulas for Calculus

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Even if you are a math-wiz, it’s hard to keep track of all those formulas. Formulus Free is an app that can help when your memory fails you. There is no more searching through pages of notes to find the right formula for your equation. The free app has all your algebra, geometry and differential equation needs in one easy-to-find place.

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10. Free Books

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So Free Books isn’t actually free, but you get a lot for its $1.99 price tag. Once you’ve paid for the app, you have easy access to 23,469 classics at the swipe of a finger.

While you won’t find modern titles, the classics — the ones you are likely studying in class — are all there. You can search for titles by name, or browse through them by genre or collection. Think of the money you’ll save not having to buy each book for your Lit class.

For those worried that they couldn’t read an entire book on their iPhone screen, fear not, as you can actually e-mail yourself a copy of the entire book so you can read it on your computer or download it to an e-reader.

Web Applications On Call

Credit: Technology Review

Notebook An Audio example of what a whisper message might sound like

When working online, it's a simple matter to open a new browser tab and quickly look something up, or to send an instant message to a friend. Ditech Networks, based in Mountain View, CA, hopes to bring the same kind of functionality to phone calls. The company has developed technology that lets users access certain applications in the middle of a mobile phone call.

The divide between the Internet and the phone system has already begun to blur. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology allows voice to run alongside other kinds of Internet traffic. Smart phones that offer easier access to the Web have introduced Web applications with voice functionality--for example, Google's voice-activated search iPhone application or a voice-based note-taking service that works with any cell-phone, offered by Seattle company Jott.

Ditech hopes to let users access many more applications without even having to take the handset away from their ears. "What we're really doing is . . . starting to make voice and phone calls truly a digital technology," says Todd Simpson, CEO of the company. Ditech's system, called the mStage platform, is a layer of software that a mobile carrier adds to its network. Once mStage is installed, users can access a voice service by saying certain keywords. For example, in the course of a conversation about meeting for dinner, a user might want to search for the nearest pizza place. A keyword, such as the name of the pizza chain, could trigger a menu from which the user could select a search application to return results within the call. The platform can also insert a quick message into a user's phone call--for instance, briefly breaking in to whisper a meeting notification in the user's ear.

To demonstrate how other software could connect to the mStage platform, Ditech has created a compatible Facebook application. Assuming mStage is implemented by cell-phone carriers, the app will show when a user is on the phone and let her friends send messages into those calls. Simpson says that this could serve as a way to quickly update a friend about evening plans, without completely interrupting her current call.

Voice poke: The mStage platform allows Web applications to be accessed from within a phone call and vice versa. For example, using the Voice Poke Facebook application shown here, a user can send short "whisper messages" to a friend, which are dropped into an ongoing phone call. Credit: Ditech Networks

One of the big challenges of creating such a system is that it has to scan through a large volume of calls in order to "hear" relevant commands. "The processing on the voice has to occur in real time," Simpson says. "We want to offer the service to anybody at any time, and so you have to be inside of every conversation in the network." He says that Ditech built upon existing technology that the company developed to improve the voice quality in mobile calls, which requires a similar level of processing across a network.

Despite processing the content of so many calls, the company stresses that it is careful to safeguard users' privacy. Hossein Eslambolchi, Ditech's technical advisor, says, "There is no recording in the whole conversation process at all." He adds that users will be able to set rules that determine when the mStage platform can access the contents of a call. Beyond that, the system only activates in response to keywords, and then only to invoke the necessary application.

Rebecca Swensen, a research analyst with IDC, says that the communications industry is at a turning point, given the emergence of so many voice-activated Web applications. She points to BT's acquisition of Internet telephone company Ribbit last year as a sign that carriers are looking toward Web technologies. "The traditional carriers are really starting to understand that they need to do something to catch up," she says.

Ditech's mStage platform could well be attractive to phone networks, Swensen adds, since it opens a network to third-party applications, but still provides them with a measure of control over the services being offered and the overall security of the system. However, Swensen notes that it's equally important to consider whether people are ready to use services like this: "Consumer behavior's always going to be an obstacle," she says.

Simpson says that the mStage platform will be ready for carriers to start testing in about three months. The service won't be available until a carrier decides to incorporate mStage and offer it to its customers, but Ditech hopes to grab the attention of some carriers when it demonstrates the technology next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.