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Ask HN: Flash Card App Idea...
6 points by QuantumGuy on Sept 6, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments
So recently I started college and began to memorize various mathematics and equations. Problem is my memory is horrible and just reading doesn't work for me so I turned to my Android and found a flash card app. Ankidroid and G+Flashcards left me off worse then when I started. There is no organization for the cards,no way to get a hold of the set of card creator, or a decent description of the card set I am downloading. So with that being said I plan on developing my own flash card app but I need input and was hoping to get some ideas of what I should make my app like from the people of hacker news, thanks in advance for any answers.


I do like Anki and am currently using it for a couple of different learning activities.

I would suggest you create your own decks with images you find or create yourself rather than downloading existing decks. Memorization is generally improved by this approach (see Higbee, Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It).

I also like how Anki has spaced repetition built in nicely.


I am also a frequent user of Anki. The only problem I see is that its preferences (intervals, set length, etc) are at the first glance not that easy to figure out. Besides simplifying it a bit more, I see very little options to improve the standard Flashcard system.

Plus what makes Anki awesome is the ability to use the cards on every OS, making it a ideal collaborative tool. But as mentioned by tom_b you need to create your own decks. There is very little use for most public decks unless you have the extreme lucky moment having to learn exactly the same as the author of the deck did.

In fact this might be a more interesting place for innovation - the management of Anki cards. Not sure how the market situation looks but you could be offering cards for popular textbooks or create a marketplace for these in order to rise the quality. Not sure how the copyright situation looks like, but you could be entering also a more mainstream market - for example by offering a card deck for each issue of Mental Floss in order to learn at least a few interesting things each month.


The only drawback is that Anki (at least on iOS) costs a lot.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id37349...

If you can duplicate the benefit and make the UI simpler (e.g., simplify it down to two buttons: I got it right / wrong), and make it cheaper, you have an ok chance to do well.


Thanks for your feedback


I know you're looking for advice on your app idea but I just want to throw this in. I'm concerned that you're memorizing math. In my experience flash cards only reduce your ability to learn (and apply) math. You need to understand the reasons behind the operations you're performing and understand why they applied for a particular problem. This builds intuition which is much more long-term than memorization. Memorizing equations for an exam helps you for that exam only (typically). Being able to quickly derive the equation any time you need will help you forever. This is harder but only at first. You'll thank yourself.

As for the app, go for it! Just don't use it for math and preferably don't pitch it as a aid for math students. You'll only be hurting them.


Thank you very much for the advice...


I made something like this for my girlfriend. She uses it for school. It's not very polished, but it may work for your needs or give you some ideas.

notecard.herokuapp.com

You can create an account (no email verification necessary). Your first step is to create a semester, then a section, then you create notecards. The notecards flip front to back with a single click. You can also put your notecards in a "Known" or "Unknown" pile so you know what you have to study.

edit: The notecards also support HTML


Thank you very much =D and does it support HTML5?


My first impressions:

Provide people a way of creating the flash cards online. Let them use a simple editor or type html directly. Make sure they can do it quickly.

Have the app connect to your web service and pull down the card groups and cards. Of course, they should be able to edit the cards on the device as well.

Swipe left/right to cycle through full screen cards, tap to flip them over.


Can you please elaborate?


Take a look at memrise, they combined flashcard theory with gamification.


Look at Evernote's Peek. It's not exactly flash cards but could well be used for it.


Explain to me how this is any better than ankidroid if you don't mind...




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