iPhone Apps for Intellectuals (Part One)

By Diane Kollman on February 15, 2013

Whether I’m waiting in line or riding the bus, I enjoy spending my downtime in productive ways. My definition of “productive” includes mastering foreign languages, listening to short stories, and memorizing useless trivia. For my fellow knowledge enthusiasts who prefer reading Tolstoy to playing Angry Birds, read on for some entertaining apps that will exercise your brain.

Sporcle by Sporcle Inc. Games [3.5/5 stars on iTunes - $1.99]

Sporcle, the highly addictive online trivia website, now has an app that spawns even more “mentally stimulating diversions” for the enjoyment of nerds everywhere. Among Sporcle’s medley of timed trivia games are topics such as “27 most common English verbs,” “57 ‘G’ Movies,” “6-Letter Elements,” “Band by Member,” and “America’s Top 50 Employers.” Clearly, Sporcle will allow you to impress people with the massive amounts of trivial information you’ve absorbed. I highly recommend converting your friends to Sporcle so you can play rounds at the table.

Quizlet by Quizlet LLC Education [4.5/5 stars - Free]

As the mobile version of their online flashcard program, the Quizlet app is a fantastic study tool for students with busy lifestyles. You can use their desktop version to create flashcards on your computer, and they will automatically update onto your iPhone under your user account. More importantly, you are not limited to the sets that you create – you can also access sets created by others, which cover almost every subject imaginable.

Of course, the best use for online flashcards is vocabulary practice; you can even add pictures to aid you in the memory encoding process. Quizlet also provides several alternative methods for studying the material, including fill-in-the-blank tests and a scatter game where you match the terms to the definitions. Auditory learners will appreciate that this app can also read the cards aloud. In addition, virtual flashcards possess many advantages over the traditional paper ones; Quizlet flashcards are highly legible (even in the dark), easy to shuffle and edit, and impossible to lose. You can hold thousands of notes in your pocket.

Geomaster by Visuamobile Education [4/5 stars - $0.99]

Have you always wanted to memorize the world map? Geomaster is an engaging way to learn the proper geographic place of countries and cities. The different game topics include world capitals, U.S. cities, U.S. states, countries by region, world flags, and famous monuments. The graphics are also surprisingly good for the low price.

GRE Vocab Genius by Brainscape Education [4.5/5 stars – $4.99]

The Brainscape Education app shares many attributes with Quizlet, as they are both based from online flashcard websites; however, the Brainscape flashcards have one key difference: as you go through each card, you are asked to rate how confident you are with the term on a scale of 1-5. The program will replay unknown words or concepts more often to ensure optimal learning efficiency.

While you do have the option to create your own flashcards, Brainscape also offers professionally-made study packs on a variety of topics, including GRE Vocabulary, Spanish, Chinese, music theory, psychology, physics, and bartending. Unfortunately, these additional study packs require an additional fee, but I feel that the GRE Vocab Genius app was worth the price. This app includes almost 2,000 vocabulary words in addition to word element sets with common prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Each card includes not only the word definition, but also synonyms and an example sentence. Even if you don’t plan on taking the GRE, this app will help you boost your English vocabulary. After all, you never know when you’ll want to use words like “insouciant” and “vitiate” in everyday conversation.

Read Part Two of this list here!

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Get Top Stories Delivered Weekly

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format