Day: October 21, 2008

Ok – first, the title will end up being an overgeneralization, but I could not resist. I thought perhaps I would get some points for “cute”.

I recently read a post from MacWorld on flashcard generators for the iPod touch. While I am assuming that this is mostly an option for individuals at present, I do experiment with apps and I was curious about what was available. What I mean is that it likely uncommon that a high proportion of students in any given class would have an iPod touch or phone, but these devices are frequently purchased by individual students who are probably looking to take full advantage of their investment.

I decided to purchase iFlipr because the MacWorld article seemed to give it the highest recommendation and the cost was $3 (a 10 card version was available for free, but I decided I was getting something out of the program even if I only post something here and it was appropriate to pay). BTW – I am not going to offer a complete description of the process of generating your own flashcards here because a nice video can be found at the iFlipr site.

Flashcards go way back. I mean flashcards were around when I was in grade school. When I was in grade school and WAY BACK are equivalent. For the flash card , the standard flashcard has a question on one side and the answer on other. You attempt to answer the question and then flip the card over to see if you were correct.  Elementary students might use them to drill on math facts. I see many college students who still prepare flashcards for courses requiring a great deal of memorization. 

The flashcards tools for the “touch” and for some cell phones presents the front side of a card. iFlipr requires “self scoring”, but some other systems might make use of a multiple choice format. The idea is that you “think” of the answer and then flip the card to see if you are correct. You then mark the card as correct or incorrect. Different systems then offer different options. Perhaps, the cards simply continue to be presented at random until you quit. iFlipr offers a presentation option that displays “unknown” cards more frequently.

I found the creation of a set of cards a very easy process. I happened to have some images of macroinvertebrates Cindy had collected on a recent field trip and my exploration stack presented the picture of a critter on the front and the name on the back.

If I was a student and I owned a touch and I frequently took classes that required lots of memorization (e.g., languages, biology, chemistry), I would find it reasonable to invest $3 in this type of software.

I suppose we could get into a long discussion regarding the value of memorization. I will save you the trouble. There is too much memorization in schools, but sometimes it is essential to know some thing rather than look them up.