FlashCard Friends does a lot of what you'd expect in terms of creating Flash Cards for students. It's well designed and very easy to use. It also does some interesting things:
- Allows users to categorize flash cards, mark them as being associated with particular text books, and then helps with the sharing of content. If you think about it, shouldn't the Flash Cards for most K-8 classes be similar?
- You can copy an existing deck and easily modify.
- They have automated definitions and translation to make it easy to create language flash cards.
- You can add pictures or sounds to flashcards or with a Java applet, you can record sounds right into flashcards, which also is great for language learning.
- For spelling, you can enter the word and the system has text-to-speech to create a sound that is the prompt that you then have to spell.
- You can create tests (and the student can have practice tests) based on the flash card content.
And I would suggest that there are a couple of interesting implications:
Web-Based, Niche Authoring Tools
I've claimed for a while (see Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups and Incredibly Cool! Vision of Future of Application and eLearning Development) that the age of desktop / installed heavy authoring tools are going to lose out to web-based authoring tools that focus on particular niches and allow composition. You somewhat see this with Survey Tool. I think that composition will look and act much more like Wiki Course Authoring.
In other words, my expectation is to have many easy to use, niche authoring tools that let's me create targeted interventions that I can compose together into an overall learning experience.
Social Learning Objects
One of the most powerful capabilities is how easy it is to grab existing content and modify it for your purposes. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time in learning, but it's always been hard. I would claim that within these more narrow, web-based authoring services, it will be much easier to share content. And there are lots of subjects where sharing makes sense.
Just so I'm fair to everyone, here are some competitors to Flash Card Friends:
Flashcard Exchange: http://www.flashcardexchange.com
Scholastic.com Flashcards: http://www.scholastic.com/kids/homework/flashcards.htm
Aplus Math Flashcards: http://www.aplusmath.com/Flashcards/
Flashcard Machine: http://www.flashcardmachine.com/
Study Perfect (Luminaresoft): http://www.luminaresoft.com/
6 comments:
I like StudyStack.com for the availability of other learning activities in addition to flashcards and the options available for exporting to mobile devices.
No ability to rate, but it does list the number of cards in the "stack"
Thanks for the tip on Flashcard Friends - I like to compare :)
With all these different Flashcard libraries there seems to be a clear need for a metadata standard for these - and other types of learning objects for that matter - so that they are inter-operable. Open social learning objects, if you will. Why not a microformat?
"In other words, my expectation is to have many easy to use, niche authoring tools that let's me create targeted interventions that I can compose together into an overall learning experience."
What do you envision the framework for "composing together" will look like and how will you get your learners to access those tools? Do you think they would need to use all the tools (learning objects) you created or would there be choice? If there is choice, how would you ensure that they are choosing the best fit for them (rather than what they prefer to use)?
Somewhat related to your previous post on attention, I am finding the more choice I give my students, the more confused and nervous they are in the learning process. This low tolerance for ambiguity, seems to turn them off to the course. In a work situation, there is even less motivation (in school, they have grades as a motivator to plug through). How would you propose to maintain their attention in this new structure?
Cracking the design of a decent flashcard app is only one part of the problem.
How to integrate that app with other learning tools and systems is the big deal here.
I've used several Flashcard programs, such as Flash my Brain, but been disappointed by most.
I reviewed LexDex, which is a new online and mobile flashcard package on my blog www.liquidelearning.com.
I think web conferencing www.gomeetnow.com software play an important role in e-learning.
Through this two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called visual collaboration and is a type of groupware.
These are great sites! I am the developer of a similar site called WordStash (http://wordstash.com). It combines flashcards with a dictionary and uses games and quizzing to help you learn.
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