Student Tools For iPad Offers An All-In-One Educational Tool
Student Tools ($0.99) by Epsilon Company Pte Ltd is a utility software package that combines three of the tools college students use the most.
This educational app is comprised of a scientific calculator, graph and notebook. The intent of Student Tools is to provide an all-in-one solution to assist students with school work, taking notes, and studying.
Upon launching the app, you begin in “my tools.” This section consists of three distinct tools: the scientific calculator, graph, and notebook. The tools within this dashboard view only consume the top portion of the screen, which hopefully hints at more applications to be added in the future.
The scientific calculator is currently the most useful of the three tools, and offers trigonometry, basic math forms, and a history and memory panel. Simply tap data from the history or memory form to quickly add it to the calculation form. You can hide forms or reorganize them by dragging them to the desired position.
The most notable calculator feature is text input capability. As the developer points out, this is the first iPad app to offer this function. You can enter both text and numeric based expressions such as "ANS*3+sin(21(cos(12)))." The calculation modes include built-in arithmetic, logarithmic, trigonometric, integral, sums and other useful functions.
The graphing tool lets you chart any function and modify the color of each. The notebook lets you type or draw notes and figures.
The app did crash once when I launched the virtual notebook, but otherwise performed quite well. To make this app more useful, I’d like the developer to consider adding more functionality to the notebook. The font is a little too small and has no options to change the size, color, or style. Another limitation is exporting and sharing. You can export notebook pages to your photo album or email the text/picture of the notebook.
The ability to save the notebook as a PDF, along with integration with third party applications such as Evernote could greatly enhance this app.
I really like the all-in-one suite of applications provided and hope to see more tools added in the future. My personal list would consist of a built-in browser, calendar, dictionary and thesaurus.
I found Student Tools to be a nice productivity companion. The $0.99 price tag is also quite reasonable. Though there is room for improvement, it’s a smart approach that could potentially replace three apps with one.
