Before looking at student-centered sites, let’s take it as read that many of the things we discuss here at ProfHacker apply to students as well. (To pick 4 at random: Mint. ReadItLater. GoogleDocs. A Timer.) But you know what? We’re old. Our mission, while it includes undergrads, probably doesn’t speak to them in the same way. They’re not re-tweeting us, they’re not arriving via searches, etc. And yet, we care. There’re so many sites that help students succeed, and it’s handy to have a list to give to anyone who asks.
These 5 sites are culled from an assignment I give students in my first-year-experience (FYE) classes. I introduce Delicious, the social bookmarking site, and then, over the course of the semester, ask them to bookmark and tag a handful of sites that are useful to them. Most of the sites are too local to be helpful–either they’re about our school, or our state, or about something we’re reading in class. But here are 5 that students have repeatedly identified as worth knowing, with some commentary by me.
- HackCollege: Everything about the collegiate experience, from Drinking Games You Need to Know to Google Docs’s superiority to Blackboard to tricking out your dorm room.
- isbn.nu: Input a textbook author/title, or an ISBN #, and it searches a dozen online bookstores for the lowest price.
- Study Hacks: Cal Newport’s site explains how to “do less, do better, and know why”–more of a methodology or philosophy towards college than a collection of hacks.
- Schoolr: Kind of like a student’s frontend to Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, Wolfram, and more, with one-click access to citation tools and other goodies. Bonus points for the optional pirate pronunciations!
- OCWFinder: A search/tagging tool for OpenCourseWare materials.
I’d like to be able to recommend students.gov, since it has a metric ass-load of information, but it’s not terribly user-friendly.
Are there sites you always recommend to students? Let us know in comments!
Image by flickr user scui3asteveo / CC licensed
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4 Responses to 5 Sites Your Undergrads Need to Know
Brian Croxall - October 5, 2009 at 10:56 am
One of the things that I find students having a hard time doing in my freshmen literature courses is finding a quotation in a novel that they know they have seen. To get around this problem, I refer them to Google Books or Amazon’s Search Inside!. With either of them, there’s a decent chance that the novel will be fully searchable. And if the book isn’t on one of the sites, I’ve found that that doesn’t mean it won’t be on the other. To use Amazon’s service occasionally requires logging in to an account, but creating one–if one doesn’t already have one–is far less onerous than scanning through all 350 pages again. I continually use these tools in this way for my own work and figure my students will benefit just as much, if not more.
Fran Barton - October 5, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I think Brian’s comment contains wise advice – recommend sites that you really use, or have used.
I’m doing a little induction sesh for students this week where I’ll be introducing them to delicious and twitter, both of which I use regularly. I think unless you can actually model to students that “this is how I use this site, it really works and this is why…,” you are on shaky ground.
I’ll also be introducing the group to the concept of RSS feeds and how useful they are, so no specific website, although I will use Google Reader to show one way of processing them.
My first comment – I’ve loved this site so far, and look forward to more – thanks people!
Billie Hara - October 5, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Over the past few years, I have introduce students to Delicious bookmarking, but I do it– not as a part of a lesson– but as an aside, “Oh, you might find this useful.” Interestingly, the students are much more receptive to the addition of a social networking tool when it’s an aside than when I’ve evaluated their use of that tool.
William Patrick Wend - October 12, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Great, I am going to show this posts to my classes the next time they are in the computer labs. Thanks.