August has come to an end, and it's that feeling again. Yup. It's back 2 school season once again. I can imagine many of you aren't exactly thrilled but - whether you like it or not - it's happening, so you have to be prepared. Check our Top 10 best apps for brain training, learning and productivity to be ready for school!
Your brain is still in summer mode - time to get it working again. Nothing like a mind-bending game such as 'Brain It On!' to challenge your grey matter. On this game you draw shapes in the air, that will interact with the 2D physical environment. After a while, though, it becomes really tough. Go ahead and try to beat it!
If you're solving math stuff it may be useful to have this app. It's basically a graphic calculator, so you no longer need to carry a huge calculator with you. It has all the features of a traditional graphing calculator, plus the ability to easily store your charts, and a nice slick graphical interface!
After getting your brain working again, there's nothing better than learning some new stuff by trying some of these scientific/math exercises. Khan Academy tracks your progress with a nice Gamification system that allows you to unlock badges as you go. You can study all kinds of stuff from Math, Physics, Biology, Computer Science, even Economics, and Finance!
And after the foundational stuff, why not move on to something specific? It's time to check a few MOOCs on Coursera where you can learn specific stuff for your future professional life. You want to learn something specific about technology, such as Excel, Python or Javascript, there are tons of free MOOCS for that. You need to learn something about Marketing or Management, there are MOOCS for that too. I'm pretty sure these skills may come in handy during the year!
You're not longer used to waking up early. No problem - there's an app for that! With Sleep as Android you can track your sleeping patterns and it can also wake you up gently. You can also integrate it with many different wearable technologies. It's perfect to help you get back to the usual routine.
If you're going back to your routine, chances are you also returning to your usual commute. Unless you're driving - that time is actually a great opportunity to read some new stuff. With UB Reader you can load any e-book format, from pdf to epub, from mobi to doc, even ppt and image files - it's the only e-book reader you'll ever need!
Note-taking is an essential part of work and school life, so, I'm pretty sure you'll be needing a note taking app if you're returning from your summer holidays. These kind of apps are really good to get your life organized. Google Keep is the Google app for that, which is especially useful if your school/university/company is using the Google ecosystem as it's office productivity environment since Google Keep integrates with all the Google tools.
This is the go to note-taking app if your're using Microsoft Office. Also OneNote is, in my opinion, a superior app. First of all, Microsoft has removed all of it's free version limitations. So this means that you can get all of OneNotes features for free. This includes: password protection of sensitive information, page history (seeing all the previous edits done to a note), audio and video recording and the audio search. Also, the possibility to embed files. It's also great if you're using Microsoft Office tools, since it provides a number of nice integrations with the productivity suite such as the possibility of importing Excel charts and adding notes to Powerpoint slides.
As a complement to OneNote you may also want to get Office Mobile. It's a smartphone version of the productiviy suite that allows you to open Word documents, Powerpoint slides and Excel spreadsheets. It's very useful to help you rehearse presentations with your colleagues on the go for
example.
Office Lens is a cool new addition to the Office Family. Its an app that allows you to turn your smartphone into a scanner. By pointing it to a blackboard or paper document/notes and turning it into a digital document! May comne in really handy during the year!