The best way to ensure a good grade on a paper is to grade it yourself before the teacher looks at it. There are a few ways you could go about it.

First, you could find a study partner who will agree to do a paper exchange with you a few days before the due date. The two of you should agree to exchange and review papers with brutal honesty. Each of you should read, review, and grade your partner's paper, using the assignment as your guideline.

If you don't have a study partner, you can still pre-grade your paper using an assignment checklist. Once you've completed a final draft of your paper, use the checklist to grade yourself on each element of your work.

• Book Report Checklist
• Research Paper Checklist

I have a favorite grade point average calculator that I use when advising students. You can use this tool to figure out exactly what you need to do (grade-wise) to improve your GPA.

This GPA calculator has options such as:

• How many credit hours will it take to raise your GPA to a specific grade.
• What you will need to average on your current courses to reach a specific goal.

Explore this tool to find out where you stand and what you need to do to stay on target with your grades.

If you have your heart set on an iPod Touch this holiday season, but you're not sure whether your parents are so warm to the idea, you may be in luck. You could sell the gadget as a research tool.

There are a few features on the iPod Touch that make it a useful device for students on the go.

First, the iPod Touch has built-in wireless access to the web, so you can do Internet research from anywhere, as long as you can pick up Wi-Fi. You can access encyclopedias, government web sites, Google Scholar--any site that you can access with your home computer.

Secondly, the device enables you to send and receive email. You can view email attachments, including papers written in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint projects. You can also see pdf's and Microsoft Excel files.

You can also keep up with group projects by accessing Google Docs.

Finally, it may be possible to record lectures with your device, as long as you have the right model and accessory. I can't vouch for the sound quality, but you know how quickly these things improve!

I many ways, the iPod Touch can be used as a tiny but serious research tool. Can you think of other ways?

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in the same place? If you've ever plugged away at a difficult book or worked on a big project for a long time, you might have felt like you were spinning your wheels, not getting anywhere.

It's easy to get discouraged from time to time when you can't see your own progress. That's why it can be a good idea to create a visual representation of your progress. You can track your own progress by creating a chart or graph.

Colorful charts and graphs can be motivating, because they show in a very visual way how well you're really moving along! You can create a graph using Microsoft Excel, or you can use a great tool created just for kids by the U.S. Department of Education.

Don't be intimidated by words that sound very technical when it comes to creating a graph or chart. The chart maker will ask for data, but the data you will use is simply the number of pages (Y axis) or the days of the week (X axis). It's all pretty simple, really. Give it a try!