If you’re a freshman, you might be slightly intimidated by your new learning environment. As far as student university life is concerned, it is fair to say that the habits and skills you practiced in high school are not going to be enough when studying, conducting presentations or preparing projects and so forth at this level. Therefore, The Dankook Herald (DKH) would like to share some effective tools we collected from various sites that we think freshmen and other Dankookians (students of Dankook University) struggling to produce quality work, might find helpful for completing their academic work for the university more easily.

 1. Website Tips for producing effective Power Points (PPT) 
 
 The very first thing that freshmen might find difficult in university is preparing PPTs for their presentations. Moreover, preparing an effective PPT is considered one of the most important factors when you consider how to survive the competitive and relative evaluation system we face in university. Therefore, the DKH would like to recommend useful and free websites that offer diverse templates and icons to jazz up your PPT. 
 

 - PPT template: the design and arrangement of your PPT can affect the quality of your presentation.

 1) Bizkam (http://pptbizcam.co.kr/)

 This is a free PPT template sharing site with diverse graph types, charts, diagrams, and animation effects and is one of the most commonly used sites for many university students.

 2) Presentation magazine (http://www.presentationmagazine.com/)

 This site is used for general information about producing a PPT including tips, and background images. If you are not familiar with PPT production, this is a good option for you to start developing your PPT making skills.

 3) Slide share (http://slideshare.net)

 The most important feature of this site is that users can share their PPT templates with each other.  You can check out other people’s ideas, designs and find inspiration for your own PPT.

 -Icon: The PPT icon fills in empty spaces or expresses an image to emphasize its value to the message.

 1) Platicon (http://www.flaticon.com/)

 Platicon allows you to download various icons for free without any copyright limitations. Moreover, since you can get a lot of icons by downloading categories, it can help you save time searching for different ideas.

 2) Iconfinder (https://www.iconfinder.com/)

 Iconfinder is the largest and the most representative icon site, and commercially available icons can be searched for separately. Some icons have copyright restrictions, so users may have to check before using them.

 3) THE NOUN PROJECT (https://thenounproject.com/)

 THE NOUN PROJECT provides simple and clean icons that can be used for general ideas. Although it is free for non-commercial use, it is restricted for commercial use.

 2. Websites for academic work in English

 There are many cases where English assignments are presented in class time. Even though all Dankookians have to take our mandatory English classes called Global English and there are also many major classes available in English.  Their English assignments can be difficult for those who just graduated from high school. Therefore it’s inevitable for fresh Dankookians to make mistakes on these assignments. In order to reduce the number of mistakes you make, here are a few sites that can help you and your English.

 1) Grammarly (http://www.grammarly.com)
 
 This website automatically corrects the mistakes that occur while writing English assignments such as reports, memos and so forth. This website has three big functions: it is a powerful grammar checking tool, you can learn from it and you can check your own work delivering an assignment without any grammar errors.

 2) Dictionary.com (http://www.thesaurus.com) 

 One of the most important rules of thumb when preparing English assignments is to avoid using the same words over and over again in your writing. This website may the best option to help Dankookians with this problem. Through this website users can find synonyms and antonyms, by searching key words. Moreover, this website lists the word options by their relevance to help you make the best possible word choice.

 3. Free information sites to get professional data.
 
 When you are doing research that requires you to use certain data such as statistics, professional reports, related news and so forth, there are two free and useful websites for you: Gallup Korea (www.gallup.co.kr), and the Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS) (www.kosis.kr). Through these websites, you can easily find relevant survey results and statistics on diverse domestic and international topics. For Dankookians studying in Economics, Business, or Applied Statistics, these sites will be your best friend.

윤진현, 김태현  dankookherald@gmail.com