Google Gives Students Tips and Cool Tools 4 ‘Skool’ to Juggle College Life

With only 24 hours in a day, it can be a challenge for a student to have a vibrant social life, a good academic record and still have a good night’s sleep each night.

To help college-going students navigate their hectic lives, Google Malaysia collaborated with Tunku Abdul Rahman University College for the first time to organise a fun and interactive session called Google Cafe: Cool Tools 4 Skool to share smartphone life hacks.Zeffri Yusof, Head of Communications and Public Affairs at Google Malaysia, welcoming students at the Google Cafe: Cool Tools 4 Skool workshop.

As students have to juggle assignment deadlines, pop quizzes, midterms and exams, it can be easy for them to miss classes or other important events due to imperfect time management. Students who attended the Google Cafe were shown how the Google Calendar can help them manage their time by setting important reminders for assignments and exams. While on the go, getting caught in jams and getting lost on the road can be serious time-wasters, but with Google Maps, students could easily plan their commute efficiently.Google app demonstrator Joey Tham showcases the many features of Google Maps on mobile, at the Google Cafe: Cool Tools 4 Skool workshop.

In the interest of helping students find relevant and credible sources to complete their assignments, the workshop explained how Google Search can be helpful in finding definitions and news articles, while Google Scholars offer access to scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Google Books can also be instrumental to students in identifying relevant books for classes with its preview function while lightening the backpack load as the books can be bought in digital form.

Many students that do not speak English as their first language may find it difficult to transition from language-medium high schools to an English speaking institution. With Google Translate, students can translate terms they are unfamiliar with in real-time; the app’s instant translate Word Lens feature can also come in handy to quickly scan and translate foreign text using the built-in camera.

As learning to collaborate is a big part of the college experience, the workshop showed how students can use Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Sheets to create and share documents that can be edited by many people simultaneously in real time. These tools are handy, especially in group assignments and collaborative note-taking. Students were also glad to find that they can now quickly capture their thoughts, take important class notes and easily share them with friends through the Google Keep app.Second-year students undertaking their Bachelor’s in Public Relations get to learn useful smartphone life hacks at the Google Cafe: Cool Tools 4 Skool workshop.

Socialisation and building friendships are also an important part of the campus life. To preserve these precious moments, Google Photos is there to automatically store, back-up and organise photos and videos easily and painlessly. The app also allows users to search photos by faces and automatically share them to your friends. Need to crop or add a special effect that will not compress your photo quality? Snapseed by Google gives students advanced photo editing functions without the need to be on a desktop.

This generation of students are large consumers of video content. Instead of just text and voice communications, youths today are communicating in more visual ways, from emojis to sharing videos as a way to socialise. YouTube, the world’s largest video sharing site can also be a way to socialise as it allows you to upload, share videos and post comments to make and maintain friendships online and offline.

Bottom: The Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Creative Industries, Tunku Abdul Rahman University College Dearna Kee (second from left) and Head of Communications and Public Affairs for Google Malaysia, Zeffri Yusof (center) along with attendees wrapping up the Google Cafe: Cool Tools 4 Skool workshop.

Nearly everyone these days can’t live without Internet data, but data plans can be pricey, especially to a student. To resolve this, student participants were introduced to Datally, a mobile data manager app that helps to monitor, save and gain control of data usage by tracking and controlling app data usage, and it also allows users to find nearby WiFi hotspots with ease. Another data-saving companion, YouTube Go, allows users to watch YouTube on the go even when they have limited data or a slow connection.

Having too many memes on the phone and not enough space to download lectures? Files Go is an app that helps optimise phone storage space by deleting old photos and memes from chat apps. With a few taps, it can remove duplicate files, erase unused apps, clear your cache and more.

"Google Cafes have always been about giving back to the community. In the past, we've had Google Cafes for a variety of audiences like senior citizens, parents and the media, but for this session, I believe that we've got an opportunity to see its social impact on a larger scale by allowing the student participants to internalize what we have taught them today and have them share it to their network”, said Zeffri Yusof, Head of Communications and Public Affairs at Google Malaysia.