Here's Mnemosyne on spaced repetition:
Spaced repetition
When you have memorised something, you need to review that material, otherwise you will forget it. However, as you probably know from experience, it is much more effective to space out these revisions over the course over several days, rather than cramming all the revisions in a single session. This is what is called the spacing effect.
During the past 120 years, there has been considerable research into these aspects of human memory (by e.g. Ebbinghaus, Mace, Leitner and Wozniak). Based on the work of these people, it was shown that in order to get the best results, the intervals between revisions of the same card should gradually increase. This allows you to focus on things you still haven't mastered, while not wasting time on cards you remember very well.
It is clear that a computer program can be very valuable in assisting you in this process, by keeping track of how difficult you find an card and by doing the scheduling of the revisions. Let's see how this works in practice in the Mnemosyne program.
I still haven't gotten around to trying Wozniak's SuperMemo -- which I need to do for math and for Spanish.
This year's self-improvement projects, fyi:
- Dolciani Algebra and Trigonetry Structure and Method Book 2 ISBN: 0-395-07725-8 (I'm tracking C's class at Hogwarts)
- Fluenz Spanish (love it! This educational telepresence idea may have promise -- )
Last school year I worked through all but the last 10 lessons of Saxon Math Algebra 2 3rd edition. Am now relearning the same material in Dolciani & it's great.
I'm thinking that if you're going to teach yourself math, two textbooks are better than one.
Am also limping along through GrammarTrainer with Andrew. I say "limping" because I'm not remotely keeping to a schedule. The program is fantastic. I strongly recommend it.
Thanks for the link to Mnemonsyne, and for the great blog. After 11 years teaching elementary school, I'm now working to develop software for memorizing math facts to automaticity. While the goals are different (spaced repetition is for recall, but for math facts we need automatic recall) forgetting is the same, so it is some great input and research. I really appreciate your blog. It's a great dialog with a lot of great info. Great.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I should have a free test up before Christmas that will let students know which facts are known automatically, and which two close ones to work on next.
Hi, I've been using Supermemo for the past three years. I have more than 20,000 flashcards and I've learned one language using it (I'm working on my second). I also use it to remember anything else I deem important (Which covers a large range of subjects). Supermemo is difficult to use, but if you can get over the difficulty (and frustration) curve it's wonderful. You might want to try Mnemosyne out first (It seems to be much easier to use).
ReplyDeleteWhichever flash card program you use, I think they are great. I've been using VTrain to improve my Spanish because it's easier to put Spanish characters into, even though it wasn't free. I would stay away from SuperMemo because I came across a lot of comments that it is buggy.
ReplyDeleteI recently have been doing a series of blog articles about flash card programs... here is the page that lists them all:
http://www.learnspanishrapidly.com/blog/category/flash-cards/
BTW, found you because I was doing a search to see who else was writing about Fluenz Spanish. I also think it is excellent.
Rosana Hart
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