Must-have Academic Apps

By ALEX DAMAST

With all classes being fully or mostly paperless this year, students have adapted to new learning techniques using different software than what they have used in the past.

With so many documents now PDF files, students need ways to highlight and annotate text. Kami is a program available to all Jericho students via their jerichoapps accounts. According to freshman Chase B., “Kami is a great way for students to annotate and highlight directly on documents and it is super easy to use! I don’t know what I would do without Kami.” 

For students who use iPads, there are many apps that serve as a place to store notes. Junior Daniel G. said, “Good Notes has drastically helped improve my performance in all of my classes and makes taking notes fun. One of my favorite features is the ability to sort my work into files by class.” 

When working on online writing assignments, it is smart to have an extra set of eyes to make sure that you are grammatically correct. Sophomore Rhea D. uses Grammarly to help edit her writing. “I use Grammarly as a way to check over my work when I have to finish an assignment quickly, and it is extremely efficient in finding grammatical errors in my writing. Grammarly helps enhance my writing by catching my careless mistakes,” she said.

Students aren’t the only ones who have been finding new and creative ways to enhance their learning experiences. Many teachers have been experimenting with new mediums to help teach their hybrid classes.

Social science research and debate teacher Ms. Drayer uses Nearpod to help engage her students whether they are in-person or remote. Student interaction is a goal of Ms. Drayer to enhance her lessons. “I find that Nearpod helps with whole class interactions because it gives me a platform to present information but then allows students to respond to that information,” she said.  

Ms. Drayer uses a number of apps to enhance her lessons for her in-person and virtual students. “Students can see what the other students think or know or have questions about in real-time and everyone participates,” she said.

In this time of uncertainty both in school and out of school, applications such as these help give students a sense of stability.