Review of iStudiez Pro Educational Mac App

Educational Mac app – iStudies Pro Review

If you are not a student just imagine that you are, and have a think about what are the important things to keep control of for your studies. Well, the first thing that you will need to do, is to have your timetable so that you know what classes you’re doing and where you are supposed be doing them. When you are new to the educational establishment you will want to know who the teacher is and maybe know how to make contact with them if necessary.

Review of iStudiez Pro

Fairly soon after beginning a class you will find that you will be given homework assignments. Getting home work done and submitted on time is always a problem even for the geekiest of students. Later on in your school year you will certainly need to know when there are tests. These could be the tests for a semester or mid-term tests. Then again it might be the full-blown exam at the end of the course. You could use a number of separate applications to take care of these educational requirements. You might even be old-fashioned and write them down in a book using pen and paper. Let’s face it though, these days assignments can be sent in by e-mail. Especially when you consider Apple iPad education tools, We will be using more apps in education.

Computers can be used to create the contents that is the evidence of your study time to be assessed as coursework. You could well be using an iPad for education for the ease of use and plain usefulness for students. Using an iPad for your studies gets even better if you are using the Apple iBooks textbooks instead of dusty old books.

Educational software for students

You could quite easily use a collection of software applications to cover your needs in the classroom. Using a contacts application for looking after information of your study partners and of the teachers. You might use Evernote to keep track of general note taking and you can even keep your timetable within Evernote. Perhaps the use of a spreadsheet is a way to keep track of your grades for your coursework, tests and various other grades.

Educational Mac app

Using iStudiez Pro in the classroom

iStudiez Pro is a good-looking application and when you start using it you can get a feel for it with sample data. Or you can go straight to putting in your own class details. Let’s imagine that you are sitting in the lecture hall on day one at your new college or school. You are being bombarded with loads of information about classes, mostly on bits of paper. Teachers love bits of paper an hand outs. What you really want to do is to use your technology to get on top of all of this, so that you feel less like a lost Newie. It is time to use the best of technology and education, for me the iPad is the future of education.

In iStudiez Pro you start by going to the Planner tab, click on the button in the bottom left-hand corner with the plus symbol on it. So the first thing to do is to add a new term and then to start adding new subjects. When you have done this, you can then start to add classes. Later you will add tests and exams.

Adding classes to your subjects in iStudiez Pro

Still in the planner part of the application, in the main part of the window you’ll see a panel for the subject. The next thing to do is to click on New Class to get the dialogue box up, in order to enter the details. Enter the starting date and end date for the class for that semester and also the time of the day the class is due to start and finish. iStudiez Pro makes it easy to add repeats and takes into account classes that could be weekly, fortnightly or monthly. You can also set it so that it will take care of classes that you have every day on weekdays. You can input the location for the building and for the room. The last piece of information to add will be the name of the teacher, or no teacher if that is the way that it works. You can also double tap on the class icon for the subject, if you need to make any further changes.

Getting an overview of your studies in iStudiez Pro

When you have added all of your subjects and the classes for those subjects, you can click on the overview tab and see how your study week is looking. This is a calendar type view, but unlike within the Mac calendar application you can’t drag and drop to move classes, if you need to make a change to the time of the class. What you need to do when looking at the overview is to double tap on the class on the calendar and you can change the details for it. This way of doing it is quite workable, but doesn’t allow for the one-off change of class.

Maybe on the previous lesson for that class, the teacher has asked if the class can start half an hour later, or earlier. Maybe in a later version of iStudiez Pro, it will be possible to do small one-off changes like this. If you do, do a double click and make changes, those changes will be also pushed out to all instances of that class.

When you are in the week view, it would be very handy if you could quickly add a one-off class. To be able to get around this, what you need to do is to leave the classes as they are in iStudiez Pro. Go into your calendar application on your Mac and create that one off class in there. So long as you have added it to a calendar that is given the go-ahead in the Prefs of iStudiez Pro, then you will see it in the overview tab. It is quite useful to see appointments and non educational items for your general purpose calendar. No point in assigning a day to complete a homework, when you have already set up another event for that same time.

day or week view of your schedule and assignments

In the overview of your studies you can look at the calendar in terms of what is happening that day, or you can see it for the whole week. There is also a monthly calendar to one side so you can quickly move through the overview of your studies. You can also set up the holiday periods for when the school is closed for summer or Christmas, for example.

Setting up your assignments in iStudiez Pro

There is a Mac version of this application and an iPad version 2 and when you aren’t given an assignment to do in class you enter the details on a per assignment basis. You go to the assignments Tab and click on the plus button at the bottom of the page. That puts in an untitled assignment in your list of assignments and you can add a title for it and give a description. If the assignment is connected to a specific subject, you can choose from the subjects that you have already set up. All you have to do then is to insert the due date and whether it is low, normal or high priority. You can even add a study partner if you want to. So that you don’t forget to get the assignment done, you can set the application to notify you. Depending on how you work, that could be on the date that supposed be handed in. Or you could give yourself a couple of days to make sure that it is done and checked before you hand it in.

There are three different views available for your assignments. You can look at them in terms of the data that they are due or you can organise it by subject or priority.

Using iStudies Pro to be an ‘A’ student

In this review of iStudiez Pro, I would say that it is a very useful app for students. There are enough functions and capabilities within the application, for students to be totally organised for the term or for the whole school year. As a big fan of the amazing iPad, I would say that this would be best used with the iOS version, to take advantage of the synchronisation available between the two versions of the application. You could easily be entering assignments on the iPad in the classroom during the school day and later have those details present in the desktop or laptop version back at home.

Keeping score of your grades with iStudies Pro

One more thing to mention, if you have set up the class to be graded in the planner section, then you will be able to put in the marks that you received for assignments that have been set. It is even possible to have a certain amount of weighting for each of the types of schoolwork so you could have coursework being 40% of the total for the course and the exam providing the marks for the rest. You will be able to see in the planner of the application the running total of your marks up to that point.

Apps for students

iStudiez Pro giveaway

I asked the developers of this application to send me a code, so that I could give a full review of the application. In their generosity, they also gave me codes to give away. I have four copies of this application to give away and four of the iOS version also. What I’ll do is, the first person to write in and give me a good reason why they should have a copy will get both the iOS and the Mac version of iStudiez Pro. The rest of the codes I’ll give away one per person until they are all gone. Send your email to mac20q @ gmail . com with the words iStudies Pro in the subject line and say why you want the application.

If you don’t get one of the apps that I am giving away and you are looking for free educational apps, then there is a light version of iStudies Pro. Either version of the application is a good use of technology for education. Hope you liked the review of iStudiez Pro for Mac.

2 thoughts on “Review of iStudiez Pro Educational Mac App

  1. Olga says:

    Great app, perfect review. This app definitely deserves to be mentioned more often, so that more an more students can learn about it.

  2. admin says:

    I have given a few of the codes out to lucky readers. No more left to give now.

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