Flashcard Applications Online
I have put a lot of time into designing Flashcard Wizard, and though
I designed the program for my own Interval Study, I spend more time
fiddling with the application, adding features, and fixing bugs than
I do conducting the Interval Study for which it was designed. Along
the way, I became interested in finding other Flashcard applications
on the net. This was primarily so that I could see what formats they
allowed their word lists to be exported and imported from/to. I was
rather dissapointed, as few of the applications I found were very good
about exporting or importing anything.
However, there are some very useful programs out there, many of them
smaller and faster than Flashcard Wizard will ever be and some have
innovative features which take a different approach to flashcard and
language stuy. Some of these applications may better meet the study
needs for many students out there. Thus, I include what information
I found during my surfing in the tables below and hope that students
will find an application which works for them, even if it turns out
not to be my own. I would encourage you to send emails to your favorite
developer and encourage them to add export and import functions so that
word lists can be easily exchanged between everyone's favorite study
program. Also, whatever program you use, consider adding your word lists/files
to the Set
Library.
If anyone out there is aware of other flashcard programs that I have
not included in this list, send
me a note with the web info or download link and I'll post it. The
more information you provide, the faster I can get it added to this
page.
Note: I have just started this page, and testing various Flashcard
applications so come back again soon for more info on the dozen or so
other apps I have downloaded recently.
Macintosh Flashcard & Language Database Applications
Windows 95/98 Flashcard & Language Database Applications
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| This is a small flashcard drilling program which has
two fields for entering words in "Language 1"
and "Language 2" You then "Drill"
yourself by entering the second field. There is a unique
way of showing you how many entries you get wrong. A
yellow bar along the bottom shows correct entries by
allowing the left side of the bar to go green, while
a wrong entry increases a bar of red to the right side.
The program can export and import from/to tab-delimited
files but I discovered that the program occasionally
crashes when you import non-Roman scripts or files
which contain 3 fields (it is designed for two). Its
default behavior is to display the first and second
entries in the first field and the third in the second
field.
Drill is fast, small, and does what it claims to
do with an innovative way of showing you your progress
during a drill.
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| "Filo! is a set of integrated language
tools built with FileMaker Pro. Filo! includes five
modules: Filo! Word, Filo! Book, Filo! Verb, Filo!
Grammar and Filo! Writer." - Author Description.
This is not technically a flashcard program, but
will act as a database for vocabulary so I included
it.
From the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Their site
http://translate.homepage.dk/ has links to many
dictionary applications and translation related
web sites. They also host some online dictionaries.
The main site is in Danish so familiarity with a
Scandinavian language is recommended.
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Japanese WordMage is a Japanese study
aid which offers nine highly integrated functions
in one package:
* a multilingual wordprocessor
* a HTML web page editor / viewer
* various study systems (with authoring):
* interactive storybooks
* auto-revision flashcards
* 'Kanji Safari' multiplayer game
* reading, aural and visual comprehension
* a powerful Kanji reference dictionary
* a grammar library builder
* a text translation aid
- Author Description
See the PDF data sheet (http://www.lavasoft.com/jwmdatasheet.pdf)
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FishCard
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(Mac) |
| Developer: |
David
Mueller |
| WWW: |
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| Download: |
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| Email: |
dsm42@iname.com |
| Version #: |
2.21 |
| App Size: |
372K |
| License: |
Freeware |
| Released: |
1999 |
| Reviews: |
MacDownload 3 Mice |
| Fool's Says: |
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| FishCard is a fairly simple but solid
Hypercard stack which allows you to create, export
or import (alternating lines with question and answer),
and review two field flashcards. It is somewhat compatible
with non-Roman scripts and you may set the fonts for
the fields in the main opening window.
You have several options for customizing your study
environment. You may control whether cards are flashed
randomly or not, whether questions and answers are
spoken (only useful for English),
While the stack serves well for basic two card
flashing, it requires the Hypercard player, loads
and quits very slowly, and isn't quite as smooth
as some other products out there. This said, however,
it is one of the few applications which even offers
import or export options, and the author could easily
improve the interface and features in a future release.
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Flash'em
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(Mac) |
| Developer: |
Dan
Crevier |
| WWW: |
http://www.boingo.com/dan/software/Flash-em.html |
| Download: |
ftp://ftp.boingo.com/%2Fdan/Flash-em1.0.hqx |
| Email: |
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| Version #: |
1.0 |
| App Size: |
372K |
| License: |
Freeware |
| Released: |
1993 |
| Reviews: |
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| Fool's Says: |
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| This tiny application has almost no
special features to speak of, but deserves a great
rating. It is fast, stable, and is serves well as
a flashcard application. It offers three fields (although
can be used in study that only has two) and is fully
compatible with non-Roman scripts. In fact, it comes
with sample cards which include thousands of Japanese
characters (including all the Heisig characters from
his renowned kanji study book).
The program opens directly into the editing environment
for cards. You may paste words into the program
from MacJDict and set fonts for the three fields
in the "Preferences" menu. You may also
control whether the words flash randomly and in
which direction. There is a "Goto" function
to jump to a certain card number.
This program also allows the simultaneous editing
of as many sets as you like (this is not possible
in the majority of other flashcard programs, including
my own Flashcard Wizard). Each one is opened in
a new window.
Dan Crevier is currently on the MacOS Outlook Express
team and is also the author of the freeware "MacJDict"
Japanese Dictionary engine for the Macintosh. His
"Flash'em" program has virtually no special
features but its 3 fields and full compatability
with non-Roman scripts along with stability and
speed make it a useful program worthy of praise.
You certainly can't beat the price.
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| This tiny application has almost no
special features to speak of, but deserves a great
rating. It is fast, stable, and is serves well as
a flashcard application. It offers three fields (although
can be used in study that only has two) and is fully
compatible with non-Roman scripts. In fact, it comes
with sample cards which include thousands of Japanese
characters (including all the Heisig characters from
his renowned kanji study book).
The program opens directly into the editing environment
for cards. You may paste words into the program
from MacJDict and set fonts for the three fields
in the "Preferences" menu. You may also
control whether the words flash randomly and in
which direction. There is a "Goto" function
to jump to a certain card number.
This program also allows the simultaneous editing
of as many sets as you like (this is not possible
in the majority of other flashcard programs, including
my own Flashcard Wizard). Each one is opened in
a new window.
Dan Crevier is currently on the MacOS Outlook Express
team and is also the author of the freeware "MacJDict"
Japanese Dictionary engine for the Macintosh.
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Windows 95/98 Applications
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| Interrogator is an easy to use application which
quizes users. It is one of the few applications which allows
more than 2 fields, in fact, you can have up to 10 fields
of information.
After a French install you may change the language to English
as soon as you open Interrogator in the "Languages"
menu. Interrogator packs almost all the commands into submenus
of the "Admin" menu. Here you may make a new file,
add/delete "topics", and add/delete "users".
When creating a new file you pick a "topic" for
the file which determines its location and catagory, give
the file a name, and determine the number and names for
the fields in the file. When this information is given you
may edit the entries in a nice edit window.
To review the information the file is selected after choosing
"Quiz me on..." from the "Quiz" menu.
The quiz mode is only possible if you choose a "User"
as scores from the quizes are saved for each user. If the
file has more than 2 fields, you choose a field to act as
the "Question" and one to act as the "Answer".
Unlike most flashcard programs however, Interrogator does
not seem to allow the simple "flashing" of words,
as answers must be typed in and are graded by percentage
(also accompanied by a cute sound for correct and incorrect).
Finally, while non-Roman characters may be entered and displayed,
they occasionally look odd when they entered as the answer
in the quiz mode.
The program is short on features but is very fast, stable,
and its ability to use more than 2 fields is one of its
strongest points.
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Academic Flashcards
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(Win 95/98/NT4) |
| Developer: |
Settimo Systems |
| WWW: |
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| Download: |
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| Email: |
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| Version #: |
1.0.26 |
| App Size: |
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| License: |
Shareware ($15) 30 day trial, file size limit |
| Released: |
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| Reviews: |
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| Fool's Says: |
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| Academic Flashcards is a very basic application
designed in Visual Basic, but one which does what it needs
to do. Unlike many applications, it is both easy to use and
offers some more advanced editing features. The application
also allows the import of tab-delimited databases. Academic
Flashcard's own file format is also tab-delminited, and it
seems as though only the final line being reserved for its
own uses.
When opening the application there is a main menu offering
choices between the main features including "Edit"
and "Study" Going to Edit will open a new toolbar
with the functions necessary to make a new file. Academic
Flashcards supports 2-field flashcards only but allows the
customization of fonts and colors and also the names of
these fields. It also allows the pasting of database entries,
even allowing you to choose the deliminiter.
Reviewing the cards through the "Study" option
firsts open a configuration page where one can choose between
files to study (if they are in the application folder),
set which field to show first, set a timer, and modify other
settings. If you have stopped flashcard study in the middle
of study before it will ask if you wish to start from where
you stopped last time. However, this is asked even when
the file you are reviewing is not the same as you studied
last. You may turn this setting off in the "Settings"
item of the "Options" menu.
The program is stable, easy to use, and performs well for
those who wish to use it for 2-field flashcard study. It
works fine with non-Roman text input. The company also has
an online site for downloading various sets of words.
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| BlastWords uses what it claims are traditional
advertising techniques to increase your learning rate through
their flashcard study program. It colors the questions and
answers on flashcards yellow and green, respectively, with
these being put on a black background.
I was a bit confused when I opened the program, for when
you select "New" from the "File" menu
nothing happens. There is a blank desktop like space which
later gets filled with the entries of your open set when
you press the "Edit" button on the toolbar. In
the edit mode you may edit your entries, sort them, search
for them, and filter them according to their "Set"
which apparently is comment or number you can enter to organize
your entries. The filter seems to still be a little buggy
and the find command also gives unusual responses. These
may be quite useful in later versions.
There are also "Go!" and "Test" buttons
which correspond to other two modes of the program. In "Go!"
mode, you are flashed the words according to your chosen
options (automatically flashing after a certain number of
seconds) and you may speed the flashing up by pressing keys
or the mouse button.
The test mode prompts you to enter the answers to questions,
and even tells you when you are "close" to the
actual answer.
There are no apparent problems with using something like
"TwinBridge" to input Chinese characters but this
program is limited to two-field sets which isn't very useful
for languages such as Japanese and Chinese or others that
might need three fields.
The program has a number of additions that interesting
but of rather questionable use, such as a calculator, the
option to change something into Spanish (not sure what),
and the option to change commas into semi-colons? However,
there are not any options for importing or exporting sets.
The sets are saved as text files though, with long runs
of spaces. With a little fiddling, BlastWord files can be
made to work in other flashcard programs.
This program has the basic needed features and some promising
sort, filter, and search features but there are still a
lot of bugs and isn't clear if this is an application still
in active development. Also, there is a less than comfortable
combination of keystrokes and mouse clicks that makes the
program a little awkward to use at times. The program however,
will do nicely for simple flashcard needs.
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Total Recall Learning System
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(Win 95/98) |
| Developer: |
Zoran Sevarlic and Zoft Systems |
| WWW: |
http://www.zoft.com |
| Download: |
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| Email: |
recall@zoft.com |
| Version #: |
2.2a |
| App Size: |
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| License: |
Shareware (29.95) 15-Day Trial uses the "annoying
dialog" method, grows more annoying after 15th
day |
| Released: |
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| Reviews: |
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| Fool's Says: |
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| The Total Recall Learning System is one of the
most complete, flexible, and yet esay to use flashcard study
environment available in shareware form for the Windows operating
system. It is fully documented, rich in features, as well
as both stable and fast.
When one opens Total Recall, you are presented with a blue
background and the menus, "File", "Study",
"Play" "Options" and "Help".
It should be noted first that the help files are extensive
and fully hyperlinked for easy reference to other related
documents. There are even help files for using help. It
should be noted, however, that at no point during my use
of Total Recall did I feel overwhelmed by options or features
and I didn't need to consult the help files to understand
the program.
The files in Total Recall are called "Subject Files"
When creating new subject files you may set their fonts
(Total Recall works very smoothly with non-Roman scripts
and has a number of features to help with entering foreign
language characters for other European languages). The editing
environment includes browsing tools to easily browse through
your entries, and a drop down menu with all entries in the
file. If you type into the "Search" box, it will
select those words which contain the characters you have
searched for.
Once you have written your file, you may review and study
it in a number of different way. There are two games to
help you memorize the words, including a "Concentration"
and "Discovery" game both of which I found to
work in fairly similar ways. One must find the pairs that
match and doing so reveals a picture hidden behind. I doubt
this is a very effective method of learning material but
it is fun.
The more useful methods of learning words are through their
"Auto-Flash", "True-False", "Multiple
Choice" and "Written Response" study methods.
The auto-flash mode flashes the characters either manually
or by a timer (or both) and you may control a number of
characteristics associated with this study method. The true-false
and multiple-choice methods take answers from other entries
to create false answers and answers for the multiple choice
test. These are not as effective (time-wise) as flashing
but a great feature to include. There is finally a "Written
Response" study method which requires a written answer,
similar to the quiz features in other flashcard programs.
All of these study methods have various methods of customization
and have their statistics saved. The program keeps track
of difficult entries which it appears to mark as "Least-Known"
These can then be studyied later on for better retention.
You may also "reset" set statistics when you have
not studied a set for a long time. After completing a study
session, a bar graph of your results and previously logged
results are displayed.
Overall the program is excellent. On the negative, I would
only mention that there are no import features, no support
for files which need 3 fields, and the price is a high $29.
However, the features are well-implemented, and the program
is easy to use.
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More to come...this page has just started, I have over a dozen flashcard
programs to enter for Mac alone...
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