There's an app for that: Best apps and websites for learning and productivity
BALTIMORE -- Getting back into the groove of school can be challenging, no matter where you are on your academic journey. Fortunately, there are some tools right at your fingertips that can give you a boost.
Here's a list of mobile apps and websites that can help you with studying, note-taking, and overall productivity.
Otter (Web / iOS / Android)
Having to simultaneously listen, take notes, and process new information during a meeting or lecture can be a daunting task. Otter is a tool that allows you to transcribe audio into text in real-time. When you're done recording, you can save the transcribed text to your device or the cloud. You can also transcribe previously recorded audio files from your device. Otter also offers integration with Zoom for transcribing meetings, and Google Meet calls. You can even search your saved text by speaker, keyword, and date.
Otter's free plan allows you to record 300 monthly transcription minutes per month, and allows you to upload three audio or video files for transcription (per account).
The pro plan, which costs $16.99, allows for 1200 monthly transcription minutes, and up to 10 audio or video files for transcription per month.
MarginNote (Mac / iOS) or LiquidText (Windows)
There are many ways to take notes. Some people prefer to simply outline information, whereas other learners may prefer to visualize new concepts. MarginNote is a note-taking tool that can help with both reading and research alike. With MarginNote, you can select text directly from your own files, or the web, and automatically generate a mindmap, outline, or flashcards.
If you're a Windows user, you can use LiquidText, which has most of the same features as MarginNote.
MarginNote costs a one time free of $12.99
Notion (Windows / Mac / iOS / Android)
Notion is a cloud based note-taking tool that allows you to create documents, plan and track projects, and collaborate in your own digital workspace. You can create a document from scratch, or use one of the 3500 plus templates available. From creating project calendars, to brainstorming, budgeting, planning social media content, fitness tacking, and more. You can share your documents with others, or even publish them to the web for public viewing.
The tool is free for personal use, but offers plans for teams and small businesses.
Adobe Scan (iOS and Android)
Digitizing documents can be a hassle, especially if your printer doesn't have scanning capability. Adobe Scan is a free app that allows you to use your phone to scan documents. You can turn pictures of documents, books, whiteboards, and even ID cards, to high quality PDF files. Adobe Scan also has Optical Text Recognition (OCR) capability. That means you can automatically convert text in a given image, to real text that you can copy or paste.
Grammarly (Chrome, Firefox, iOS, Web, Android, Microsoft Office)
When you're doing a lot of writing, it can be easy to miss typos and grammatical errors. Grammarly is an automatic proofreading and grammar-checking tool. If you're on the web, you can paste your text directly into Grammarly, and it will scan your text for spelling and punctuation mistakes, and other grammatical errors. It will even provide suggestions for improving sentence fluency.
Grammarly offers a free plan which has all the features you'll need for regular use, but if you want more robust proofreading and full sentence rewrites, you can upgrade to the premium plan which costs $12.00 per month.
GoodNotes (iOS / iPad)
If you're an iPad user, and you have an Apple Pencil, you might enjoy using GoodNotes. It's a digital note-taking app that allows you to type, write, and doodle right on your iPad. Your notes sync to your GoodNotes account, so you can view them on your other Apple devices.