Ever since earning my Master’s Degree, I’ve had to complete continuing education in order to maintain my license and certification. Although I am not currently working, it’s important to me not to let it lapse. One day I’d like to go back to the work force and if I’ve worked that hard to earn my M.S. I don’t want it to go to waste by not doing my CEUs! As a mom, it is easiest for me to find courses and credits online. That way I can do them on my own schedule and I don’t need to figure out any childcare or go anywhere! Thankfully there are many universities and programs that allow for online learning.
There has been an incredible increase in the number of people learning online. Some providers have seen demand for their courses increase by several hundred percent. Not to mention the fact that many school kids, college, and university students have switched to studying online. With this in mind, I thought I would pull together the details of some handy tools that you can use to get more out of your online learning experience and help it go as smoothly as possible.
A plagiarism checker
When you hand in an academic paper, you can almost guarantee that before it is graded it will be put through a plagiarism checker. So, it makes sense to do so yourself. It is relatively easy to check your paper for passages that are too similar to what has already been published. As you can see this website makes it easy for you to do exactly that.
A decent spelling and grammar checker
You should always spell check what you write before publishing it. Ideally, you want to put it through more than one package. You will be surprised by how many extra mistakes you pick up just by doing this!
A way to listen to what you write out loud
You need to realize that you cannot depend solely on spelling and grammar software (SPG). It will not pick up every single error that you make, only the most common ones.
For this reason, it is important to get into the habit of reading what you write aloud. Hearing what you have written read back to you enables you to pick up on many of the errors that even the best SPG software will miss. Some word processing packages, for example, Microsoft Word 360, have this facility built in. If yours does not, you can use a free online text to speech reader, like this one, instead.
Image capture tools
When you find information that is of use to you, it is important to capture it in some way. In some cases, that means selecting the text you are interested in and copying it and saving it somewhere. That works really well for articles, but not for things like infographics. For those, you will need some sort of screen capture extension. Look for one that works with your browser and enables you to capture the entire screen. Also, make sure that it is also possible for you to scroll through the page, highlight interesting sections, and copy only those.
Tools that will help you to focus
It is fantastic being able to go online and learn about practically anything. But, many people find it easy to get distracted. If you struggle to stay focused while studying online check out these ten great toolsthat you can use to keep you on track.