Staying organized in college

Home » Web Guides » Education » College Life

In This Guide

Most Popular

College Life: Resources and Tips for College Students

Whether you're going off to college for the very first time, or are a returning student, you can find the help you need with our College Life Web Guide. Succeed academically, physically, financially and emotionally during your college years with advice on dorm life, health and finances, as well as Web tools for academic success. Don't go off to school without first checking our College Life Web Guide.

Educators: Sign up for our education newsletter.

Expand All Guide Sections

Dorm Life and Keeping in Touch with Friends

For many students, going to college involves a physical move away from family and old friends and ... read more »

Staying organized in college

One way to make sure that you are successful in college is to keep yourself organized; the Internet has a number of tools to help you stay on top of your own assignments and tools to help you organize and track group projects.

Dulcinea's Insight

If you want to get organized without adding another brand new application to your computer, consider using the calendar feature of a Web search engine or application you already use, such as Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook.

Many college courses use some sort of online tool to keep students up to date on assignments and grades and even allow them to turn in papers or participate in discussions online. If your professor isn't using an application like this, you may consider suggesting that you start a course blog so that students can stay updated.

Dulcinea's Picks

To keep yourself organized ...

30 Boxes is very simple to set up but has a surprisingly large number of additional features. When you create your free account you'll be able set the calendar to show up on your blog or MySpace page, import contacts from your e-mail accounts, integrate the calendar with your Facebook account, and even upload an avatar of yourself to display with your calendar.

go to site »

HipCal is a free online calendar and to-do list with some added features: it'll send you e-mail or cellphone alerts about important events, and you'll be able to create group calendars to coordinate for a school, work, or other project.

go to site »

Spongecell has an interface that makes adding or editing your free calendar as easy as clicking on the item. You can publish an RSS feed of your events, share your calendar through e-mail, or even sync your calendar with your iPod.

go to site »

To keep group projects organized ...

StikiPad calls itself a personal wiki. You can create and edit pages of text, allow others to view or edit your pages (and StikiPad displays who made what changes and when), use templates to create stylized pages, even compare edits from different versions of a document. StikiPad also has a to-do list feature, and lets you create an author profile for yourself for other viewers to see.

go to site »

Backpack allows you to create what it calls "pages." On the pages you'll be able to keep to-do lists, create a page title, attach files for others to download, and attach pictures. Backpack also has a calendar feature and gives you the ability to share pages or calendar events with others for collaboration. Backpack offers a free account with limited features, and a few different paid plans that range from $5-$14/month.

go to site »

Google Docs and Spreadsheets isn't a calendar, but it is a good way to track changes made to a document by multiple users (if you are, say, writing a group paper or taking group notes). Google Docs allows you to view previous versions and even revert to an old version of a document if you like. You can share a document with others and give them privileges to edit or just to view it. You can also export documents to word processing programs or as HTML to a Web page.

go to site »