Mobile phones can be great contraptions. They allow you to keep in touch with all the important people in your life, and often double up as handy diaries, mp3 players or cameras.
Calendar and Alarms
Some of the most worthwhile tools on a mobile phone are the calendar and alarm functions. You can set alarms to get you up in the morning, go off during class to annoy your teacher, or you can use them to set an established daily (yawn) homework time.
For instance, you could set up a reminder that sounds every weeknight at 7 to remind you to start doing your homework. Although this may sound pretty dull, by setting a specific time for homework every day you are effectively giving yourself more time to yourself, as you will be unlikely to be able to enjoy yourself to the full outside of school if you are always thinking that you ought to be doing something else. Instead you can go to the amusement arcade, or a buddyandrsquo;s house to play video games, secure in the knowledge that you donandrsquo;t have to think about your homework until 7pm comes along. Also, it saves you from leaving until itandrsquo;s late in the evening, when you should be unwinding or worse, having to do it the morning before itandrsquo;s due, as itandrsquo;s going to be a lot more stressful to do it at these times.
The trouble with using mobile phones at school is that they can often be pretty distracting. However, if you can keep a lid on your phone use effectively, and accustom yourself to all the features, you can actually use your phone to help you with your schoolwork! Although this is probably the last thing you would want to be using your phone for, making effective use of at school could actually save you a lot of time on your homework, leaving you free to run around shooting videos of your mates to put on YouTube.
If you are working on a group project, why not try the three way calling feature, available on most mobile phones. If you donandrsquo;t know if your phone has this feature, try calling one friend and, having entered into dialogue with them, enter the telephone number of another classmate and press andlsquo;sendandrsquo;. If your phone has the three-way feature, then the second call will go through and the friend will be put on hold. Then press send once more to talk to the first caller, and so on. If youandrsquo;re using this feature regularly, itandrsquo;s worth getting a deal, which gives you a certain amount of free calls every month, as calling two people at once costs twice as much!