Have you ever been harassed by your parents for being too attached to your screen? Let’s be honest. Even if we don’t like to admit it, scrolling through social media, taking pictures and checking our messages can be one of the biggest time sucks when we have work to do, but technology can also be equally helpful.
Tools:
When studying for AP exams and finals, use your beloved technology to enhance your studying. If you learn best by testing yourself with flashcards, make a Quizlet and study on the way to school. If having someone explain the material to you is most effective for you, find a helpful video on YouTube or other online websites to improve your understanding of the content. You should even watch more than one, as sometimes you’ll find that you like the style of one teacher better than another. The web makes it possible to have a virtual tutor on any subject at any time of day or night.
Distractions:
It can become quite easy to get distracted when you are spending long hours working or want to avoid a difficult task but try your best to resist that BuzzFeed temptation until all your work is completed. You can use Screen Time on the iPhone to limit the amount of time you are on certain apps and to schedule social media breaks. Let the song you want to listen to or show you want to watch motivate you to use your time efficiently.
Organization:
There are a multitude of ways that technology can help you with the organization of all of your work. Staying organized and maintaining an orderly computer will ultimately be advantageous. Sort materials by subject into folders on your desktop or Google Drive. While you might not want to take the extra step of putting a file in the correct folder and saving it with a name that will help you identify, that extra second will have lasting effects in the future.
Does your mental list of all the things that you have to do ever get so long that you begin to forget items on your checklist? Well, technology has a solution for that! There are numerous homework and time-management apps to assist you! Typing out a list of everything you need to do will make the tasks seem more achievable.
Communication:
Use social media to reach out to peers to study together. Reviewing the material with a friend, whether through FaceTime or through Google Docs, can be extremely helpful. Explaining your notes to a classmate will clarify the material for them and will solidify your understanding of it. Create a shared review sheet so that multiple people can add to it. Do you have a quick question for your teacher and the test is tomorrow? Send them a quick email with your question, and hopefully, they will respond and explain the answer to you.
Technology can assist you with your research for papers too. There are numerous programs that can help you organize your research, create outlines and document your sources. Our parents might complain about our use of technology, but they would have loved to have a program that created a bibliography for them! Since we can’t live without it, use technology to ease the stresses of this difficult time of the year.
Sarah Horvath is a sophomore at Abraham Joshua Heschel High School in Manhattan.
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Fresh Ink for Teens is an online magazine written by, and for, Jewish students from high schools around the world.
