Later On

Having been prodded by a commenter into recalling that there are very good flashcard programs and many, many volunteered “decks” of cards that can be downloaded for free, I went looking and happened across this site that reviewed flashcard software for the Mac. I was bowled over by his strong and explicit endorsement of Anki, a shareware program, donation requested. (It runs on Mac, PC, Linux, and smartphones, among others.) If a guy who wrote serious reviews of all the Mac flashcard software he could find, and he comes out that strongly in favor of one particular program…

That’s the program for me. I downloaded, installed it, and have been using it for the past hour. I downloaded two enormous decks of Spanish vocabulary, the second one of which is the one I’m using: 10,000 most common Spanish words presented in order of frequency. Wow. And even if, for technical reasons, the count is really 8910 instead of 10,000—heck, I don’t mind.

And you can use the decks with images, audio, video, what-not. Scott, I’d love to see the Anki deck you could create on photography, using images—not just how-to stuff, but also informational decks on photographers, photographic techniques, history of photography (e.g., identifying famous photos). And someone I occasionally hear from wanted to learn about jazz—think what a wonderful deck it would be with audio and video clips. Oh, man.

I think these would have to be labors of love, but certainly there are enthusiastic amateurs who would begin a deck that could then grow Wikipedially.

I did some browsing and searching among the myriad decks they have, which include quite a respectable collection of Esperanto decks. (I’m thinking that once I’ve got the Spanish down, I’d like to revisit Esperanto—one of those aforementioned labors of love.)

At any rate, Anki is absolutely stupendous. And it’s obvious from the number, variety, and quality of decks available that I’m extremely late to this particular party. … Yes, just stopped to check: they do have a chess deck (879 chess tactical problems—downloading it now). Still, there may be some few who haven’t heard of this luscious piece of software (which, note well, is cross-platform).

UPDATE: The Wife thought Anki would be terrific for art history, so I did a search. TYD, take note of ArtHistory Greek:

This is a deck of flash cards for my ART History of the Ancient Mediterranean. It has cards covering 700-500BCE Greece art highlights.

You have to maximize the window and still scroll, but some nice stuff.

UPDATE 2: The “answer” portion of the 10,000 most common Spanish words deck includes links to the definition of the word in several different on-line Spanish-English dictionaries in case you want more detailed info. Awesome.

UPDATE 3: I would bet some of the decks grew over several years by teachers starting a deck for a class and adding to it year by year—e.g., a deck for a Spanish class could include vocabulary (tagged to lesson number), basic grammer, cultural facts, historical facts, and so on. Obviously, the teacher would have to know that students had computers or computer access, but within a few years of adding, polishing, and editing, the deck could become quite a tool. Indeed, students could also work on the deck, either as assignments or as volunteers: identifying the things in the course with which they need help, and then making cards that provide the help they need, with the teacher simply reviewing and advising. This would also help students become more self-reliant in their own education: solving their own problems, as it were.

UPDATE 4: I like to go through the cards in both directions, looking at Spanish and answering in English, but even more looking at English and answering in Spanish: that direction is, to my mind, the true test of knowing the word. The Anki deck that I’m using now, the 10,000 most common Spanish words, is Spanish->English. So I send an email to the author, who referred me to this FAQ:

How can I reverse the order of the question and answer?

If you want to flip the cards only once, go to Edit>Card Layout while reviewing, and click the flip button. If you are planning to switch back and forth, please read on.

Anki chooses the optimum time to review cards based on their easiness. Changing the direction of cards can make them easier or harder, so if you don’t track the review intervals separately for the two directions, this will lead to sub-optimal scheduling times.

Therefore, Anki allows you to create two sets of cards: one set for reviews in one direction, and one set for reviews in the other direction. You can do this by clicking the card button at the top of add items.

If you already have cards, and want to create new cards with the question and answer flipped, please see the next question.

UPDATE 5: I’m finding that Anki really will do everything I want, but it’s a complex program. I highly recommend that you view his videos on how to use the program. Here’s the first.