Five Free Apps to Help Study Habits

By: Terran R. Smith

Surrounded by a technology-addicted society, it is difficult to disconnect—even for the most studious-oriented learners. Fortunately, the following five, free apps allow students to harness smartphone ‘addiction’ to his/her academic advantage.

*Note: These apps will likely be most helpful for those individuals in secondary and/or higher educational levels.

StudyBlue

• Pros:
  • Search millions of study materials from colleges nationwide
  • Searches specific to school, textbook, instructor and/or specific course
  • Save study materials in virtual folders organized by subject
  • App tracks amount of study time in each set and answer accuracy
  • Both free and premium versions offered
  • Premium Trial not mandatory for free membership
  • Sync to Facebook for easy sign-up and access to classmates
  • More than 350 million users; most popular on list
• Cons:
  • Study materials are greatly limited without premium subscription
  • Lack of filters makes search disorganized and timely
  • Typing flashcards minimizes memorization vs. handwriting flashcards

myHomework

• Pros:
  • Less to carry with a planner on-the-go
  • Writing space is unlimited
  • Optional notification setting for deadline reminders
  • Includes separate section for to-do and checklists
• Cons:
  • Interface could be more aesthetically pleasing
  • Not exactly ‘user-friendly’
  • Tracks homework, assignments, etc., but only if user manually enters item
  • Does not sync with Facebook or any other social media

 FocusNow

• Pros:
  • Timed sessions help habit formation, time management and concentration with competitive incentive:
    • Fruit tree sprouts at beginning of session and grows to full bloom, if smartphone or tablet is left untouched
    • Touch device during session and tree withers and dies
  • Saves fruit tree for complete session; begins to form fruit tree castle kingdom after multiple sessions
  • Worldwide ranking boards
  • Creative, colorful design with simple interface
• Cons:
  • Does not sync to Facebook or other social media–difficult to find friends
  • Certain areas of menu, such as settings, only available in Chinese
  • Creation of account is mandatory–new password with no purpose

Evernote

• Pros:
  • Take notes anytime, anywhere
  • Add images, audio and/or video related to notes
  • Office docs and PDFs compatible for adding to notes or tasks
  • Syncs with Facebook, so classmates are easily found
  • Collaborate on course agendas, share notes and connect with classmates within app
  • More than 100 million users; 2nd most popular app of list
• Cons:
  • Premium, paid membership required to access all features
  • Free download doesn’t offer online access, unlimited uploads or Touch ID privacy option
  • Complicated interface for not-so-tech-savvy individuals
  • More hype than help

Flashcards by NKO:

• Pros:
  • Makes studying fun
  • 13 different games to choose from
  • Use your study materials in games
  • Sync with Facebook and beat friends’ or classmates’ high scores
  • Bright design with simple interface
• Cons:
  • Again, there’s something to be said for writing materials by hand
  • Study materials must be manually added and/or edited

School is hectic at times, granted, but the key to controlled chaos is to simplicity. From cluttered work-space to daily distractions, every student can use a helping hand with school and study habits. Smartphone software can help students sustain success in school.

Music Therapy Student Mission Trip

Story and Video by Terran R. Smith

Student Cole Eisenmenger, 22, wore a sports a graphic art, baseball tee, cargo shorts, and Birkenstocks. He flips shoulder-length, hazel hair from his face, that reveal dark brown eyes and a sincere look.

“Some people may look at my long hair and judge me or call me a hippie,” he said with a chuckle. “Which is totally fine, because I’m doing something I see as positive for the world. And that’s what really matters, in my opinion.”

Recently, he mixed music therapy with missionary work. Eisenmenger is a senior majoring in Music Therapy in KU’s School of Music. The first week of June, Eisenmenger travelled to Kingston, Jamaica with the Sacred Heart Church Parish from his hometown, Norfolk, Neb. This was the church’s 13th annual trip to the Mustard Seed Communities.

“These communities take in children whose parents can’t take care of them, or even just pick them up off of the street and take them in. It’s an orphanage, essentially,” Eisenmenger said. “But they do so much despite how little they may have. Some of the communities are 100 percent self-sustaining. It’s incredibly inspiring.”

Although this was not his first mission trip, it was his first based on spiritual and musical connection, both with the children and with himself.

He also says learning music is an important part of understanding and implementing music therapy properly.

Students in music therapy are trained to learn and research how music and its elements, such as:  pitch, harmony, melody and dynamics. These elements are used to change people’s behaviors for the better.

“My other goal, other than helping the overall state of the communities, was to use music to bring the children joy,” Eisenmenger said.

Eisenmenger described music therapy as “manipulation of different aspects of musical elements” including pitch, harmony, melody, dynamics.

“These aspects are used towards a non-musical goal, be it social, emotional, academic, or, such as this case, spiritual,” Eisenmenger said.

As he began to play the guitar, Eisenmenger says,  a group of 15 or so kids stormed into the room because they heard music.

Eisenmenger brought egg shakers, drum sticks, buckets, and gathered other instruments so the children could join. Children crowded the room, played along, and began to sing with him.

“I started playing a lot of Bob Marley, which they all knew by heart. It was really powerful. For 20 or 30 minutes, we all became one,” Eisenmenger said. “And, it was all because of the power of music.”

Eisenmenger said he achieved both main goals for the trip. He helped improve construction for the orphanage, and created a connection with the children. What’s more, it inspired him to return after he receives his diploma next May.

“I absolutely want to return to make at least a short-term career there with music therapy,” he said.

Hunter S. Thompson: A Legacy Living

“No. We can’t stop here. This is…BAT COUNTRY!” 

Summary:

Hunter Stockton Thompson was a countercultural icon that bridged the gap between fiction and journalism. Famous for his work with Rolling Stone and for books such as “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” this quirky writer had a tone so unique; his writing was given its own genre called gonzo journalism. It is a journalistic style still in use today. This profile delves more extensively into the life of Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalism and the legacy he left behind.

 

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

The late Hunter Stockton Thompson (born 1937 in Louisville, Ky.) believed, “There is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms” (Maria Popova). It was this belief that helped Thompson to construct a new journalistic genre contradictory to the very core of said topic’s definition. “That once-radical, now-ubiquitous style of New Journalism that does away with claims of capital-O objectivity,” is known today as gonzo journalism and “instead inserts the author into the story as an active first-person narrator,” (Popova).

On February 20, 2005, Thompson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 67; however, the firsthand, personal reporting approach, which first made Thompson so radically iconic, now lives as the literary legacy to the original gonzo journalist.

Thompson, like his works, did not waste any time beating around the bush. He found writing his forte and was inducted into the local Athenaeum Literary Association for his fiction and poetry while still attending high school.

 “I was not proud of what I had learned, but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”

As talented as young Thompson was, his run-ins with the local law eventually caught up to him. At age 17 a judge gave Thompson the ultimatum between prison and military. Choosing the latter, the young man enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1956. Here, he continued to develop his craft and wrote a weekly sports column for the base for his two years of service.

Upon discharge in 1957, Thompson worked a number of newspaper jobs, but found satisfaction in none off them. He began freelancing from Puerto Rico and South America for The New York Herald Tribune, the National Observer and various other publications.

An article entitled, “Hunter S. Thompson, The Art of Journalism No. 1,” from The Paris Review foreshadows, “The vocation quickly developed into a compulsion,” (Douglas Brinkley, Terry McDonell). Before the ripe age of 25, Thompson completed his first (and only) novel, The Rum Diary. Based upon his experiences in South America, the colorful adaptation was not actually published until 1998.

Thompson got his foot in the door of journalism with his foreign correspondent work, but it was the publication of his first non-fiction book Hell’s Angels in 1967 that first established his reputation. This work, arguably the first to emulate true gonzo journalism, was supported by over a year of Thompson’s travels with the infamous gang.

This firsthand account supported Thompson’s gonzo strategy, which, according to an interview from the Quietus, aims to, “place the journalist at the very heart of a story, until he becomes the central protagonist” (Ian Johnston). His first book set the tone for future pieces and forced the public to take a second look at things, but gonzo journalism would need more propellant to solidify itself as a new genre.

It was the publication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1972 that fortified the vitality of Thompson’s presence in American journalism. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes, “First serialized in Rolling Stone, it documents the drug-addled road trip taken by Thompson (as his alter ego Raoul Duke) and his lawyer (Dr. Gonzo) while also discussing the end of the 1960s counterculture.” The success of the excerpt caused the magazine to offer Thompson a job as its national political reporter.

 

“I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes.”

As Thompson paved the pathway to possibility by bridging the gap between fiction and journalism, this opportunity from Rolling Stone, “brought Mr. Thompson’s rule-breaking style to a broader audience, where his outrageous voice helped refocus the nation’s customarily straitlaced political dialogue” (Michael Slackman).

Thompson had the perfect blend of rage and fantasy to resonate with cultural frustrations. “At his peak Mr. Thompson reached out in his writing to a generation made cynical by the Vietnam War and the Watergate political scandal and that was prepared to respond to Mr. Thompson’s visceral honest[y],” (Slackman). This mixture left an heir of drama and reveal lingering at the end of Thompson’s articles.

Along with this journalistic style come natural questions of virtue and validity. One of the most fundamental ideas of journalism is the idea of objectivity and the ability to account without bias. Slackman quotes an Associated Press interview conducted in 2003, in which Thompson states, “Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you’re writing about before you alter it.” Thompson did not argue for bias in order to get his personal outlook across or simply to make for better readership; he argued for it because he believed it to be a necessity. 

Hunter S. Thompson was a bold, innovative journalist who never ceased to test the boundaries of every rule. He refused to believe that journalism was something objective or that stories could be told from the outside looking inward. This defiance was replaced with wholehearted subjectivity.

Thompson became enveloped in first-person accounts. This made them all the more edgy, and, for Thompson, perhaps, all the more destructive. Thompson’s firsthand, semi-fictional style was so consistently successful it became the genre, still known today, as gonzo journalism.

 

Poll Results: And the winner is…

With 61% of the vote….

Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism takes the win!

Stay tuned for the article , “Bat Country,” coming very, VERY soon 🙂

 

-Terran Rae

What do YOU want to learn more about?

Attention! It’s time for LNP’s first ever Reader’s Choice Poll! It’s up to YOU to decide which article I’ll post next! Poll closes Thursday. Just choose between the two topics below–it’s as simple as that! I can’t wait for your feedback!

 

As always, thank you for visiting. I’ll post the winning article on Thursday evening.

 

Be the change,

 

 

Terran Rae Smith

Happy Birthday, Daddy:

Father of Mine: Reflective Analysis of Moral Development

By Terran Rae Smith

Preface: This is dedicated to both of my parents. To my mother, thank you for constantly striving to improve under the unfortunate and harsh conditions life has given you. To my father, I thank you for helping me to see through the ailments, and into my mother’s beautiful heart.

2006: Dad, 47, and myself, 13

I am told that my mother was once vibrant, charismatic and breathtakingly beautiful inside and out. I don’t remember her this way because my mother began abusing prescription pills during my infancy, and developed many mental illnesses as the addiction continued throughout my childhood. Today, only a glimmer of that happy, outgoing woman I’m told about remains.

My mother suffers from a number of mental illnesses, some of which include: Bi-Polar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Hypochondria and Munchhausen Syndrome. Because of her illnesses, she was very abusive, manipulative and made unethical decisions, to say the very least. Although my father divorced her when I was nine, my mother fought for custody of me until the day I graduated high school.

 Other than my father and I, my sister and the rest of my family have been estranged from my mother for over eight years. She has been able to maintain a lifestyle of lounging and pill popping by using the technology of today to her advantage, much like the following topic discussed in chapter two of Rushworth M. Kidder’s, How Good People Make Tough Choices. “Widespread, designed for great speed, often decentralized, [our] systems are increasingly susceptible to misuse or manipulation by a single individual making a single wrong decision” (Kidder 24). My mother receives Social Security, Disability and other government paid leisure because she knows how to manipulate, at all costs, anyone and anything until she gets what she wants.

2006: Dad, 47 and myself, 13

My mother is abusive, clinically insane and is the most unethical person that I personally know. Seeing the woman I didn’t want to become did teach me what not do to in life, but seeing my father forgive and empathize with my mother truly shaped my character as a person, and gave me the strength and wisdom to forgive her as well.

After my parents divorced, my father raised my half sister and I as if we were both his own. During one of the many custody battles my mother pursued, my father purchased a car and a house for my mother simply out of the kindness of his heart. This woman had committed adultery, drove our family to bankruptcy to feed her addiction and abused his children. For the rest of my family, that was enough. But my father saw something that no one else did: the illness.

To be completely honest,  I once hated my mother with my entire being. But my father’s actions and explanations taught me a lesson synonymous with one of Kidder’s. “Most wrongdoing arises instead from immorality—a violation of the precepts of morality,” (33). My father helped me to understand it is because of my mother’s long-time drug use and mental health that marred her moral judgment. Since graduating high school in 2010, I’ve forgiven my mother’s actions and, although we continue to be estranged from one another, my heart is and always will be filled with love for her.

 Today, the strongest person I know turns 55 years old. Michael Scott Smith watched the mother of his children succumb to addiction, raised two daughters as a single parent and still manages to be hopeful helpful and sympathetic to the woman who tore his life, family and heart apart. He is my father, my warrior—my best friend. Without his guidance, I would not be able to, as Kidder puts it, “ identify, systematically and deliberately, the values [I] and [my community] hold” (33). Today is his birthday. From his perspective, it’s just another day and another year put on his tab, but from my perspective, July 6^th not only celebrates the birth of one man, but also the birth of two parents. For that is exactly the role he has and continues to play in my and my sister’s lives.

2009: My Mom and I

My mother may have made a lot of unethical decisions in life, but my father’s altruistic actions and wise words taught me to look beyond the surface and to realized that she is not an unethical person, or, more importantly to myself, an unethical mother. “She’s not a bad person; she just has a lot of bad problems,” my father says when my frustration reaches its limit. “She may not be able to show it sometimes, but she loves you and your sister so much, Terran,” he says. There is more to my mother than repercussions from poor decisions; behind the mistakes, pills and sunken eye sockets, lies the woman my father fell in love with—my mother, Stephanie Joy Smith.

 

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Please take a few minutes to view the info-graphic below. 61 million Americans, including myself, have mental illness. Some wounds are invisible, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still heal ❤

 

 

SOURCE: How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth M. Kidder

“A Family that Vapes Together”

Short Documentary by Terran Smith

Graduating 2015 from the WIlliam Allen White School of Journalism

Former smoker and vape enthusiast, Robby Swonger, has two main concerns in life: family, and helping others. He discovered electronic cigarettes are a successful alternative to quitting smoking, and realized a way to change the lives of his family members, and countless others in the community forever.

This is the story of three generations working together under one roof to become closer as a family while aiding others in the journey to put down cigarettes, and pick up a vape. This is more than just a  story about Lawrence’s latest local business.

After spending the past semester with the Swonger family at The Vapor’s Edge E-Cig shop, it’s become apparent; this is a story about family. These, are the Swongers.

 

I was lucky enough to document the Swonger family and their business for the first 15 weeks of this semester. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to include all of the information I had originally intended. So, I’ve put together a couple of infographics I believe will be helpful to those interested in learning more about this topic.

This graphic is one of the more inspiring and less ‘shame on you’ sources of information I’ve found about cigarettes and quitting the detrimental addiction. As you can see from the first bullet on the timeline below, it only takes 20 minutes after one’s last cigarette before positive changes in the body begin occurring.

The timeline goes on to explain the benefits and regeneration of your body for the next fifteen years after not smoking.

[Infographic courtesy of http://www.cancer.org]

We all know that cigarettes are addictive, bad for our health and a waste of money. However, this infographic not only includes some of the most valid points about the literal and figurative costs of cigarettes, but it also includes information on what an individual saves in the long-run after switching to electronic cigarettes.

[Infographic courtesy of http://www.VaporXpress.com]

 

 

Thanks for Visiting!!

Two months from now, this site will have been up and consistently active for two years! Looking back on my earliest posts makes me proud of the difference that I’m able to make in any and every person’s life, and also gives me a few laughs as I look at how far I’ve come towards truly being a professional broadcast journalist.

No matter how much effort I put into a project, all of YOU are the true key to unlocking the dreams in my life. To my consistent followers, I am so thankful to know that there are members of my audience who keep up with every piece of work I make. It makes me tear up just typing this. And to those who find me on accident, visit every once in a while or even just have clicked on my website once–thank you so much to each and every one of you as well.

Just before I began typing this, LawrenceNonProfits officially reached 2,900 views. I am so moved and humbled by this accomplishment. I promise to continue to maintain this website as long as you all want me here to read/view/listen to it 🙂

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

 

Best Wishes,

Terran

Business Behind Bias

Media and Profit Motive

                                                     photo courtesy of AntiCorruption Society

By Terran R. Smith

It’s no secret that the mainstream media is full of bias towards certain political parties. Fox News is conservative, CNN is liberal and MSNBC is even more so liberal. It is helpful to be able to choose a news station according to one’s political outlook because the bias of each news station is meant to appeal to a certain audience. With numerous channels representing various political beliefs, the issue at hand isn’t readily apparent.

Profit motive is a topic I’ve been learning about in one of my journalism classes this semester, Business of Media. The term is fairly self-explanatory; it means that the sole purpose of a business existing is to make profit. It goes without saying that companies must profit to provide services to consumers; however, mainstream televised news programs’ profit motive could be seen as profit greed.

photo courtesy of WordPress

According to the profit motive, a consistent and profiting business must be established.  This can only be successful with government assistance, which ultimately results in government control. Therefore, news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, while those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail, and are relegated to the margins of their markets.

The best way to gain profit is to gain a greater audience number. By segregating broadcast channels by different political party outlooks, each and every audience member with a political opinion can easily find a station suitable for his/her beliefs. Unfortunately, because the channel chosen suits the viewer’s political stance, most of what said viewer will see and absorb will include subjects relating to the station’s bias.

                                                           photo courtesy of Looking at the Left

The media we are presented with is a mere sliver of the spectrum of current events. Each ‘left’ and ‘right’ station presents information copacetic to that of it’s audience bias. Consequently, alternative opinions and entire subjects all together are very marginalized from the audience. The profit-driven media’s portrayal of reality is simply a miniscule subset carefully chosen to be convincing, informative and, most importantly, representative of the station’s political stance.

Maintaining the audience support and viewership is part of the profit motive for mainstream media but, but is certainly not the only. What’s more, large news stations do depend on the government for leads, tip-offs and sources. In the event that a dominating, mass station made the government unhappy, the government subtly, and perhaps permanently, ceases giving information to the corporations. This obviously causes great financial stress and is avoided as much as possible.

photo courtesy of Conservative Women for Truth

It’s become copiously clear corporate media are unable to deliver the news in a fair and democratic way to the people. Although government, investors and advertisers have mainstream media in a sticky situation that doesn’t mean it’s unfix-able.

The media needs to make a change towards focusing on the vital events relevant to the general public. In showing only ‘left’ or ‘right’ viewpoints, the bias expands and viewer opinions are formed based on falsities. If mass media only represented the facts in a democratic way, the public would become more educated with well-rounded opinions.

Because there’s such a powerful amount of markets controlling media, the citizens of this nation must unite, criticize the recurring failures and supersede with a suitable alternative. Until the public can come together strong and determined for change, mass-media will continue to marginalize opinions and overlook diversity.

Like any and every other social or political issue, the road to resolution is long and winding. When the government is involved with anything, a situation becomes at least ten-fold more complicated than it originally was. For now, viewers are barely at bay with the overly-biased and under-informative broadcasting; however, I believe that, like any other issue in history, time will eventually remove the red tape surrounding this media-based dilemma.

Famous Fascination: Oscars Off-the-Screen

Where are the ‘budget cuts’ in Hollywood?

“We want to thank all of you for watching us congratulate ourselves tonight.” -Warren Beatty

By Terran Smith

At a mere 13.5″ tall, each gold plated “Oscar” statue for the annual Academy Awards costs half a grand to manufacture. With just two dozen categories to cover, the awards alone still cost approximately $12 grand to manufacture. This is just one of countless examples of extreme frivolous spending for this Hollywood tradition.

Beginning as an elitist club for film buffs and other invites, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was established in 1927, and is a ‘film organization.’ The annual awards have since become a big part of the rest of society as a way to commemorate and admire those on the red carpet. Last nights Academy Awards were viewed in over 200 countries worldwide. With the never-ending pile-on of fiscal and social issues occurring, particularly in America, I can’t help but feel that this tradition has become contrived and greedy like many other historically successful markets.

From best actress to best dressed, every aspect of the Academy Awards is competitive in a way quite similar to dogs participating in Best in Show. Perhaps that statement could be seen as a bit extreme, but let’s really break down the facts. The only things people, in general, remember from the Academy Awards are: best movie, best dressed and worst dressed. The last two items on the list aren’t even relevant to the entire event! Yet the ensemble of an attendee can give an actor more attention than the winner of an actual award.

Almost $22 million was spent in 2012, during the recession, on the 84th annual production of the Academy Awards. Obviously, that number doesn’t include each pair of Jimmy Choo heels and matching Tiffany earrings. Even if average people do think it’s okay for actors and those in the Academy to spend ghastly amounts of money to celebrate one’s own success, that doesn’t change the fact that the viewers are the ones truly supporting the profit the Academy is able to rake in year after year.

If all of the diamonds, feathers, cameras, tripping, waiting, awkward laughing and political picks are that engrossing, then apparently the cost of this idolizing entertainment is of true value to the public.

Thus, it is truly the community that supports the financial whims of the Academy. Why, then, do the public still have no say in the awards or even right to become an Academy member? This is not only a public example of discrimination, but it is also one that society has celebrated throughout history.