Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

First a small update from Part I. I tried Mental Case and found it not to my liking. it is an incredibly smooth piece of software, but a little complex for my needs. Inputting flash card data would take far too long. I also tried ProVoc which I absolutely loved. It’s easily one of the most polished pieces of freeware I’ve ever used; and for learning a language it is simply amazing, I may end up using my computer more for this after all. It even works on an ipod (though not, regrettably, an iPhone. But that’s okay, we’ve other ways to do that which we’ll go into shortly!) I really cannot recommend this software enough.We’ll come back to ProVoc, let us continue on in general. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of us who take classes with a great deal of rote memorization, flashcards are the medium of choice for this terrible activity. I’d like to suggest to you that there is a better way to memorize such information, but really, when it comes down to it - nothing really beats a pack of index cards for it.

Now, I can suggest to you that you learn things like noun declension endings in a sort of sing-song way, but really the bulk of the work remains in flashcards.

However, just because we are stuck with such primitive things does not mean we cannot dress it up a bit. Personally, above any technological solution, I do prefer paper flashcards over software flashcards. I just learn better from paper, and there is a tactile aspect to it as well. The long and short is I don’t know why, but I do. So, I will give you a few software options, but mainly I’m going to give you some tips on making flashcards fast and efficiently. I don’t know about you, but my penmanship is wretched and I learn better when I’m not spending time deciphering the letters - so computer made flash care the goal. And sure, I could show you how to make them just on cards… but why just make cards with just a tad more work you can create cards you can view on your ipod and on your computer as well?

As far as software solutions I’ve a handful for you. Free unless otherwise specified. I won’t go so far as to tell you what’s best, this sort of thing is very subjective and due to general learning styles it’s best to try a few options. I just heard about Mental Case myself, and it looks very attractive (though it had better be for 20 bucks when Ebbinhaus works so well for free). ProVoc is new for me, too… and I’m quite curious about it. I will, of course, keep you updated. I have tested iFlash, but I didn’t like it all that much more than Ebbinhaus and since its printing functions are limited in the demo I couldn’t test those (and if I can’t test it, you can be sure I won’t buy it.) Crippled shareware is bad form.

For Mac:

• Mental Case ($29, $19 with academic discount)
• Ebbinghaus
• Genius
• ProVoc
• iFlash ($14.95)

For PC:

• Virtual Flash Cards ($21.95)
• PC Flashcards ($29.95)
• Education Pack for Windows XP Tablet Edition (Flashcards)
• Flash Card Manager ($19.95)

In Part II, Making your own…