Useful Software and Applications
Useful Apps
Free apps for scanning documents from your phone:
- CamScanner: Click here for Apple or Android
- Microsoft Office Lens: Click here for Apple or click here for Android.
Or use these paid versions to scan documents from your phone:
Recommended Accessories
Online and Hybrid courses may have synchronous (live) online meetings. While many laptop computers are equipped with a camera, speakers, and a microphone, using headphones with an attached microphone and a webcam for these sessions is recommended.
Downloadable Software for Academic Use
Downloading Microsoft Office Applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
All current staff, faculty, and students have access to Office 365 through their UPEI account, which allows you to download and install the Office applications on up to five computers and five mobile devices.
To access Office 365 to use its online features or to download Office applications to use on your computer visit the Microsoft Office portal.
Log in with UPEI email address as your username and the same password you use for other UPEI services.
SAS Statistical Analysis Software
SAS offers a University Edition which any faculty, staff, or student can download and use for academic purposes.
AutoCAD and Other AutoDesk Software
Autodesk provides open access to more than 100 products – available to students, educators, and institutions.
Learning Apps
Brain.FM is a website/app that provides hundreds of instrumental song choices to help stimulate, calm, or improve your focus on daily tasks. Whether you want to work, meditate, or sleep, Brain.FM can help. Simply log on, select the activity you would like, and the music starts playing. You can easily apply a time settings and skip for different songs. This is for students who are easily distracted by voices, steps, and background noise. It is also for students looking to be more mindful and in tune with their present task.
Focus Keeper is an app that helps promote productivity and a distraction reduced environment. Using the Pomodoro technique, Focus Keeper breaks work sessions down into smaller chunks with 5-minute rest periods, making it easier for students to focus and stay on task. This is for students who are just starting out, want to create good habits, or can only keep focus for shorter periods at a time.
Forest is an app that can help you break the habit of constantly being on your smartphone. The app works by “planting a seed” in a forest. If you stay away from your phone, your forest will grow, but if you use your phone, your forest will wither. This helps serve as a visual reminder to stay off your phone and focus on what is really important. This app is useful for students who work best with visual reminders and like helping the environment at the same time.
Habitica is an app that helps you develop healthy habits and organize your daily to-do lists and goals, all while playing a game. Gain points when you complete tasks, and win prizes for your Habitica avatar. This app uses games and competitions to help you achieve your goals. Think of it like a FitBit for a gamer’s world. This is great for a student who needs a little incentive to stay on task. Have fun and set goals!
Productive is a habit tracker app that allows you to pick and set goals you would like to focus on. Whether it be drink 8 glasses of water every day, or study for 30 minutes each night, this app will help you achieve your goals. This app provides reminders to complete your daily tasks, and displays a calendar to track your progress. This app is great for a person who needs to set specific times and dates to complete tasks. You can set your goals for morning, afternoon, or evening.
Swipes is a task management app that is extremely easy to use. If you are looking for a simple app that provides a canvas for you to list tasks to complete in one day, this is it. Create your task list and set reminders for the morning, afternoon, or evening. This app also has a “Done list” so users can see all the tasks they have achieved. This app is for good for a person who gets too overwhelmed by strict scheduling as it focuses on just only a few goals, one day at a time.
Wunderlist is a cloud-based task-management application. It allows users to manage their tasks from a smartphone, tablet, computer, etc. Wunderlist is free to download!
Use this app to create to-do lists, grocery lists, study tasks, and more. You can set due dates and reminders to keep track of everything and meet deadlines. This app is for creating separate, organized lists across days, weeks, or months. This is for students who like to create lists and need organization at school, work, and home. It is also great for sharing with classmates and family.
Other Helpful Apps
Alarmy is an app that encourages you to get out of bed by giving you challenges to resolve. Alarmy would be beneficial for students who tend to simply snooze or shut off and ignore their alarm.
Good Morning Alarm Clock is a smart alarm clock that finds the optimal time to wake you up, keeps track of your sleep quality, and notifies you if you've had enough sleep. Good Morning Alarm Clock would be good for students looking to improve their sleeping habits and wake up feeling more energized.
Mint is a popular free online personal finance app that offers a variety of easy-to-use financial planning and tracking tools. Mint could be useful for students who struggle to keep track of their spending and would like to become more financially conscious.
Mylo is an app that helps you save and invest. The app links to your bank account and automatically rounds up all your purchases and saves the spare change. Mylo could be useful to students looking to effortlessly save money.
Offtime helps you unplug from your phone by giving you daily limits and allowing you to set “off time” goals. OFFTIME could be helpful to students who find it hard to focus and get easily distracted by their mobile device.
Pocket and Instapaper are both bookmarking apps that allow you to save and later view, online articles, videos, publications, etc. These apps could be helpful to students who use multiple devices and/or would like to keep all their online finds saved to one place.
Learn more about Pocket and Instapaper
SimpleMind is a mind mapping tool that turns your computer, tablet or phone into a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device. SimpleMind is world leader in mobile mind mapping and is available for Android, iPad and iPhone, Mac and Windows. It is designed to synchronize your mind maps across platforms and access your mind maps anytime, anywhere. SimpleMind could be helpful to students who like to see their ideas visually represented.
Tiny Scanner turns your mobile device into a portable scanner. Scans are saved to your phone as images or PDFs. Name and organize your scans into folders, or share them. Tiny Scanner can be useful to students who need to submit handwritten work but do not own a scanner, or who want to digitize and keep all their work organized in one place.
