Study Prof

VocabSushi, though still in beta, is proving to be a nifty tool for bulking up those flabby vocabulary muscles. You’ll need to sign up first (free) and pick the test your studying for (GRE, SAT, whatever). VocabSushi will give you short quiz to find out your current verbal expertise, and then you’re off! Quizzes, reviews, pronunciations, definitions, contextual uses, and more! And when you master a word, VocabSushi will add a new word to your list so you’ll never run out.

It does have some minor beta issues, but they’re small, and certainly worth the annoyance. I wouldn’t necessarily use this as a replacement for flashcards, but it’s a nice upgrade for your arsenal.

Studies show that simply tracking how many times you engage in a good habit (or sideslip a bad habit) will cause most people to up those numbers. How simple is that?! So start tallying up those push ups, timing your study hours, and counting your calories, to become master of your domain!

Amble on over to this nifty site for tracking your trends. Enter absolutely anything you want–number of periwinkle blue caravans you’ve narrowly avoided purchasing, amount of salmon mousse consumed with no lethal effects, quantity of fleshy-headed mutants you’ve found friendly, total number of obscure movie references you’ve noticed in this post, whatever–and the site will keep track of it and allow you to display it in a variety of tres-hip ways.

Check your grammar, style, and spelling with After The Deadline, a free online tool. Just paste your writing into the box and After The Deadline will underline words or phrases that need a closer look. Click on the word or phrase for suggestions and explanations. This would be a great way to revise those rough drafts.

At http://www.online-stopwatch.com/ they have an online stopwatch and timer, but you can also download them as flash programs.  Need more than one stopwatch/timer running at a time? You can launch multiple instances of the flash program. A must have for timing those study sessions. And all for the low, low price of FREE.

Here are a few more sites similar to the aforementioned Academic Earth site for watching online lectures by top academics.

For business related topics take a look at MBAvid.com, and for lectures in a larger variety of subjects try Lectr.com.

For your thoughtful consideration I’ve included a random, hilarious (disturbing?) picture I found at Awkwardfamilyphotos.com, just cuz.

Updated from May 2008 post…

God bless book stores.  For the low low price of zero dollars an SAT/GRE junkie like me can go take a look at purty much every test prep book out there.  I go through the various books on a semi-yearly basis to see if there is any new test fu I can bring to my students.

There usually isn’t.  All the test prep books use very similar tactics and techniques but rename them and package them to sound different from the competition.  This is pretty much what you would expect, isn’t it?  After all, there are big bucks to be made, and I’m not the only one with access to a book store.

Which SAT or GRE prep book should you buy? The one you’ll use. One recent study compared different methods of test prep to see (more…)

My SAT and GRE students will be familiar with my admonishment to look up each new vocabulary word in a good dictionary, read all the definitions, look at the roots and prefixes, look at the synonyms, and ESPECIALLY to see the word used in context. I stumbled across Wordnik the other day. What a godsend! It seems tailor made for the task.

Check out the totally free visible body website. Just register online and you can cruise through and search 3D visuals of all the bodies systems and organs. This is a powerful tool for students of anatomy!

It’s never been easier to manage your research resources. Use Zotero to cite, search, and manage all your resources whether their on the internet or on your thumb drive, and it’s free!

If you’re using passwords like “12345″ or “password” or “open sesame,” (busted!) then you’re make life easy for thieves. Your passwords need to be rock solid to keep your bank account, credit cards, and emails safe.

And remember, just because the site is relatively unimportant doesn’t mean the password you use is unimportant. For example, perhaps you’ve used a weak password for your secondary email account. If someone hacks that, they can then use it potentially to have your main email account send them your password, or perhaps they could dig up that credit card number you emailed to Uncle Festus last year.

Make’em long. Make’em strong. Use this fantastic password strength checker to help.