How to Turn Working and Learning into a Pleasant Process

Use of Online learning tools and Applications

The society today seems to have adopted new expectations regarding self-reliance. I mean, most people who are interested in furthering their studies also need to work to pay their bills. When you are working, it is most definite that attending a normal classroom at the set time would be difficult and in some cases, impossible. Let’s start by relieving your fears about how you can balance time for learning while working. Well, there is a number of online tools that supplement your ability to access new information and provide learners with many different options for learning participation and productivity. Online learning tools may be in form of any program or app that is accessible via an internet connection and increases a teacher’s ability to put forward information and a student’s ability to reach that information. Critically thinking, a teacher led pace may be too slow in today’s world where students are more comfortable and familiar with using the internet to research on unknown topics. In other words, modern technology has pretty much encompassed every part of human race and every part of life is influenced by the process of digitalization. However, digital education has lots of benefits to give but there’s still much in that field that is yet to be exploited. Following are a few comprehensive online learning tools that could help any busy and working learner.

1. Moodle

Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a broad tool that is a learning management system (LMS) at its basic. Its greatest benefit is to allow learners, educators and administrators to come up with their own custom learning environments that suit their needs impeccably. It is a single solidly built, secure and integrated system which you can download onto your own web server.   

Moodle is proven and trusted globally. It has powered tens of thousands of learning environments worldwide. It has won the trust of organizations and institutions including London school of Economics, Shell, Microsoft, State University of New York and the UK and Japan Open University.

It is Easy to Use

It has drag and drop features, a simple interface, ongoing usability improvements and well-documented resources that make it easy to use. Using a single sign on, users can access all their online portals 

Suitable for Online Exams

Learners do set exams online using assessment tools such as Quizzes which have set up options such as multiple choices or true/ false.

It can be Used Anywhere, Any time and on Any Device

Moodle can be accessed from anywhere since it is web-based. Content on Moodle platform is easily accessible and consistent across different web browsers.

Allows for Active Learning

Learners work together in wikis and forums which encourages peer assessment and self-reflection with dedicated tools, and gets feedback through surveys.

It’s Free with No Licensing Fees

Moodle is free to download. Anyone can modify and extend Moodle for both noncommercial and commercial projects without paying any fee. 

No language Limitation

Moodle community ensures that Moodle is translated into more than 120 languages which helps users to easily localize their sites.

2. Canvas

Canvas is one of the widely used and most preferred LMS. It is easily adoptable and customizable. Learners can mold it to fit their needs with ease. It is awesomely reliable and fast having been hosted by strong platforms like AWS.

Canvas avails all your take assessment tasks, course activities, view and submit assignments, and receives your grades and gives feedback.

Canvas is password protected and conducts internal audits regularly to carry out and publish a public security audit. 

Applications that every Online Learner should have

Technology in its ability to make things easier for its users is a striking thing. Millions of people have turned to online sources for skills training, free courses and continuing education. There are a variety of helpful apps that are a typical addition of this trend. Without the right apps to aid in learning and streamline tasks, studying online can become a nightmare. Most apps lists are all jumbled up but I want to give you a clear explanation about the most important ones and the purposes that they serve, categorizing each aggregated app into the meaningful requirement expected of most online learners. Following are some of the apps availed by both Android and Apple thus offering students the convenience of accessing their school classroom and forums from anywhere on their mobile devices or laptops. They are suitable and a must have for every learner who is also working since you can log into the classrooms on your mobile phone even when you’re at work to check on class updates, assignment deadlines, tutor feedbacks, and grades.

Kindle Mobile App

Kindle offers a new and modernized reading experience. It avails the ability to carry thousands of books with you everywhere you go. Using the kindle app is free and you can download it on your windows or any other device. Check out these available kindle services.

1. Kindle Unlimited gives you access to Amazon’s vast library containing thousands of eBooks and audiobooks once you have subscribed. It only costs ten dollars per month.
2. Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL) is available to anyone with a Prime Membership and it is accessible to learners with an Amazon Student account. KOLL allows learners to borrow one book every month without limitations of due dates, meaning you can borrow a book for every new class and return it once the class is over.
3. Kindle Personal Lending allows kindle users to borrow and lend books to and from each other. The only restriction is that eBooks are loaned just once and the borrower has 14 days to read and return it. 
4. Kindle Public Library is a great option for learners. Books are available to you for a certain duration just like it happens in a physical library. They are offered through an online service called OverDrive.

 Mint

Creating a budget is important, whether you are a student or married with kids and trying to embark on further studies. Most students are financially savvy and they look for alternatives that are less expensive. Mint app allows students to keep track of spending and personal finances. This app brings together your credit cards, bank accounts, investments, and bills to let you know where you are overspending and where you can save money. Mint helps you to keep track of your bills adjacent to your account balances such that you’ll know the money to put towards your bills, you’ll know what’s due and when exactly it’s due. Following are a few tips that I think will be helpful.

1. Avoid credit when you don’t have liquid cash and forego buying things that you don’t really need. Adding onto a mounting debt on your credit card especially if you don’t have available monthly funds to pay off bills on time will get you covered up in interest charges.
2. Don’t spend too much on eating out. It is okay to so sometimes but ensure you don’t spend too much dining out. Take advantage of specials in grocery stores and put a little effort to prepare most meals for yourself to save more every month.
3. Whenever possible, buy used textbooks. You cannot do without textbooks besides them being a massive expense for most students. Buying used textbooks which are much cheaper or even renting them for a certain period for time and returning them once you are through will minimalize your spending. You can also sell them and save the money towards the following year’s books.
4. Write down your budget on a paper or a student budget template spreadsheet outlining the forms of income that you get (including your loans, job, parents) alongside all your expenses such as food, books, rent and others. Differentiate between the needs and the wants and that should not give you a negative number once calculated. Make adjustments where required and consider using Mint which is an effective tool to help you plan. Mint offers you equitable recommendations to help you budget effectually and save money. It even helps you keep track of your credit score and gives you a broad picture of your financial aspect.

Study Tracker

Study Tracker is a simple app which helps in tracking the time one spends on a particular course, individual projects and tasks to help online learners visualize unique study habits with the aim of ensuring Straight A’s. It helps to keep track of the time that members stay in their designated study locations. With this app you can set for every member the minimum number of study hours and each member receives a report automatically at the end of each study period.

Documents to go App

This is a tool that helps learners to access Microsoft Office Suite fully on their mobile devices (apple and android). You can create new files, view, and edit docs (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) and also view Adobe PDF files. You can access files in your computer or your device’s memory from the app. Docs to go is compatible with other apps like Sky Drive, Dropbox, and Google Drive. You can store all your documents and files to access them later from anywhere.

Dropbox

Dropbox app gives students access to files of any size from their android or apple powered devices and allows them to submit these files anywhere, anytime. Dropbox holds your files in one central place and securely syncs them across your devices. Dropbox helps you send large files easily and you can even send files to people without it. It makes it easy for online learners to submit assignment files. For instance, there are times when you unavoidably find yourself running late at work or just caught up doing other things. Dropbox relieves every worry about late submissions of assignments and probable loss of marks since it allows you to submit your papers from where you are on your mobile device or laptop.

iAnnotate

This app aids in reading, editing and sharing docs, pdfs, PPts and image files. Think about how convenient it would be to share your discussions and responses from home, editing your papers over lunch break at work, reading while traveling and so on. I mean, with iAnnotate you can highlight documents, take notes, and insert stamps and more.

CourseSmart

Course Smart app helps you in purchasing and reading textbooks, keyword search and taking notes. CourseSmart is a great choice for electronic textbooks. It avails 90 percent of the core textbooks out there.

Instapaper

This app helps in recalling websites for research purposes. It strips away confusion and gives the learner an optimized view of content without requiring internet connection. The user can save pages to an unread queue on Instapaper using a bookmarklet called “Read Later”. This makes it easy for learners to save online articles for future reference or for reading later by just clicking a bookmarklet in ones browser to save the story you are looking at. Instapaper strips down the content into just its text and the necessary images. You can then access your saves pages or articles on your iPad or iPhone later at your own convenience.

Marvin

This app is available for both Apple and Android devices and it puts together all your EPUB eBooks on one plane. EPUB is an open eBook provided by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). It is mapped out for content that can flow in again, meaning that the text display can be adjusted for the particular device and it rearranges the content into pages depending on the text font and display size. As a result, it gives learners the pleasure of reading EPUB books with ease by just flipping the pages without the need of panning or zooming the windows to view part of the pages that may be out of the area displayed.

Marvin helps you save your book files in your Dropbox and retrieve them later when need to use them. It is EPUB only meaning it is not bound to any online library or book store. Therefore, Marvin does not work with your kindle titles but that is not a limitation since it has a tight merge with the desktop computers app called Calibre e-book. Calibre makes it easy to get DRM from your kindle books and save them to your Dropbox as EPUBs. This is a ship-shape little hack that might take a while to set up but once it’s done everything becomes automatic. This is what you need to do. 

1. Put together all your protected kindle books onto your favorite device. 

2. Grab some DRM-stripping plugins from Apprentice Alf for Calibre and strip the DRM.

3. Then you convert those books into universal EPUB format.

4. For easy access, you keep them in your Dropbox.

Moreover, this software saves your battery since it has a low power consumption besides being rapid running. It can automatically remember the text size to display for each of your books and even the last reading position. Marvin is reflected as one of the finest replacements for the well-known Stanza app which no longer runs.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a unique search engine that uses a wide collection of expert level algorithms and knowledge to reveal precise information for general language searches. It automatically answers questions and gives exact numbers with sources, generated reports, and recommendations for similar queries. In other words, it uses its strong computing power to organize raw data into meaningful information. Wolfram is ideal for complicated Math that overpowers most other calculator websites. It provides graphs and it’s suitable for comparisons. You can compare books, websites, cities, and anything else you’d like. For instance, if you enter a type of food, Wolfram will give you its nutrition information. If you enter different types of food, Wolfram still compares them for you. It even calculates your body mass index if you enter your height and weight. Convincingly, it is a good app for learners especially those taking Math.  

In conclusion, technology is integral to every learner’s academic success. Innovation of cloud based systems and online tools and apps has made learning an exciting experience and a lot easier. Gone are the days when one had no alternative but to attend a face to face classroom. With online apps that are easily accessible on mobile devices, furthering studies while working or raising young ones at home is turned into an enjoyable affair. I hope you find this article helpful. Please leave us your comment below and we’ll appreciate your honest view. You can also contact us through our website assignmentessays.com for assistance with any school work.