Cards and Lattes for Teachers

Cards for Teachers is a month-long teacher appreciation program from Study Blue. From now until the end of the month anyone can post thank you notes for their favorite teachers on the Cards for Teachers site. The cards can be Tweeted, emailed, shared on Google+, and shared on Facebook. At the end of the month Study Blue will randomly select 300 teachers to receive free latte gift cards.

StudyBlue Launches a New Way to Find Self-Study Material

StudyBlue is an online and mobile flashcard service that I've covered in the past. Today, they launched a new way for students to discover and create flashcard materials. Now when students create flashcards in StudyBlue they can also see 30 related flashcards from the community. For example, if I were to create a flashcard about photosynthesis, I would see 30 other flashcards on photosynthesis. I could then review my flashcard about photosynthesis as well as the 30 related flashcards on the topic. I could also add all or some of those community flashcards to my flashcard sets to review. The video below demonstrates this new feature in 27 seconds.


Applications for Education
Yesterday, in my post about Class Connect I wrote about how teachers can benefit from sharing resources with each other. The same can be said for students who share study materials on StudyBlue. Viewing the flashcards that other students have made about the same topic could provide students with a new way to think about and remember the topic they're studying.

Does Cell Phone Use Lead to More Time Spent Studying?

StudyBlue, a mobile flashcard/ studying app that I've reviewed in the past, has released an infographic based on data about student use of mobile devices for studying. There isn't a lot of information on the infographic, but one thing that I did find interesting is that according to StudyBlue's data (based on more than 4000 cell phone users) students who use their cell phones for studying spend 40 minutes more studying each week than those who do not use cell phones for that purpose.

Applications for Education
While this infographic clearly isn't the most comprehensive study of cell phone use among students, it does give us one example of how cell phones can be useful for students. One reason why students who study on their cell phones spend more time studying is that they always have access to review materials. Instead of spending time telling students not to use their cell phones in school perhaps we should be spending time teaching students about apps like StudyBlue that they can use to study.

StudyBlue Mobile - Create Flashcards on Your Phone or Computer

StudyBlue, a free service for creating flashcards and sharing them, recently released a new free mobile app for creating flashcards on the go. The StudyBlue mobile app for Android and iPhone allows students to not only study their flashcards on the go, but create new ones as well. Flashcards created on a phone can be synced to and accessed from a computer too. Even if an Internet connection isn't available, students can still study pre-existing flashcards on their phones. Study Blue account holders also have the option of setting reminders to prompt them to review their flashcards at regular intervals.

The video below offers a glimpse of the StudyBlue mobile app in action. You can get the Android version here and get the iPhone version here.



Applications for Education
What I like about the StudyBlue mobile app is that it is available for both Android and iPhone users. Too often I come across apps that while good are only available for one platform or the other. By being available on both platforms, the Study Blue app has the potential to be used by more students than it otherwise would. I also like that the flashcards created on the mobile app can be synced to an online account so that students can easily transition from studying on their computers to studying on their phones.

Friends With Brainefits - Study With Your Facebook Friends

Study Blue, a collaborative studying tool that I reviewed a couple of years ago, recently launched a new service called Friends with Brainefits. Friends with Brainefits is an application that works within Facebook to help students help each other study. The basic idea is that a student will select a topic (or topics) from which a new vocabulary term will be selected. That term is then posted on the student's wall for his or her friends to add a definition or example to for the purpose of helping each other remember the vocabulary terms. The Slideshare presentation offers an overview of Friends with Brainefits.

Friends with Brainefits turns Facebook into a study tool

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