Hi Duolingo.
Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
301–310 of 538 posts
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#302I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…
Some examples I'm aware of (mostly in the language learning and especially Japanese learning space)
- subs2srs MPV script: create srs cards from subtitled videos, if you have subtitles tracks for source and target language it will fill them both in (though that sometimes has caveats, different languages may distribute the meaning of a line of dialogue over different subtitle lines)
- asbplayer chrome extension: inject extra subtitle languages into streaming services and create flashcards from them similar to subs2srs
- yomitan: browser dictionary lookup, primarily for bilingual dictionaries for Japanese and Chinese but also has custom dictionary support.
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#303I’m sure the algorithm can play a huge role in the effectiveness of learning but for me the difficult part was always creating the cards and actually opening the app to practice. I've built Komihåg [1] to try and combat this: Select any text on your iOS device and a flashcard is automatically created for you, and the app is then showing you the cards on the Home Screen / Lock Screen / Apple Watch Face. I haven't gott…
Cool idea. I’ll check it out. It would be cool to do something like this for single word highlights on an e reader. If I have highlighted a singe word it is because I want to add it to my vocabulary.
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
The macOS services model seems like a good fit for this kind of thing. Services are little bits of context-aware functionality that apps expose to enable integration between apps without active developer involvement. An example, in most Mac apps if you select text, right-click to open the context menu, and open the Services submenu you’ll see a number of services that do something with the highlighted text. Ideally t…
I hadn't thought of this; thank you for bringing this up. I will actually read into this. I didn't write it in my original comment, but I almost mentioned the OS because I'm coming round to the idea (albeit slowly) that the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user). Perhaps Shortcuts are now powerful enough to d…
> the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user)
I’m absolutely of this mind, but unfortunately it also depends on developers’ willingness to make use of these hooks, and it’s becoming increasingly uncommon for third party apps to have any integration or automation affordances, especially any specific to any particular platform. It’s become the norm to ship the absolute bare minimum, which is the lowest common denominator “it runs”.
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, and flashcards generally work better when you're reinforcing existing learning. Learning by flashcards is hellish for me.
> Learning by flashcards is hellish for me. Wait, you're putting yourself in a situation where the first time you see a card, you have no idea what it is?
I've tried it in a few situations (e.g. my driving license theory test) and yeah it's absolutely awful and I quickly stopped. My modus operandi is obsidian notes->flashcards->revision to keep my knowledge up. However, a lot of people do actually do that!
People will genuinely download top x wordlists for a language and try to learn from them. Hideous, but they do it.
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#306I found it a little annoying that SRS is immediately explained to mean Spaced Repetition System, but then the F is added without explaining what it stands for. Most references of the article do neither. Except https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The... which says the F means Free. Seems a little too easy? I found nothing else. Chatgpt says it means Flexible, which actually makes more sense? Anybo…
When "FSRS" is first used it's a clickable link, and the first sentence on that link is:
> FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler) is a modern spaced repetition algorithm that was developed by Jarrett Ye.
If I do a search of "flexible spaced repetition software" I get no results, which strongly suggests the dumb guesser you're using guessed something plausible to placate its user. This is common behaviour for this type of software.
In summary, I politely suggest you critically review how you interact with knowledge on the internet.
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#307Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spending half an hour mind-numbingly learning words through flashcards will teach you about as much vocabulary as an hour watching educational videos, but it'll be far less fun and you'll feel like it actually took two hours. Keep that up every day and you'll burn out much faster with option 1 than option 2. Now, maybe you have enough motivation for that not to matter, or the self-discipline to keep going - as I did…
It's very likely that you're using Anki in situations that will burn you out and drain your motivation anyway.
Nah, I love physics. It's just a lot!
Edit: It's worth noting I had a nasty head injury that was slowing me down. Optimising my learning was a necessity, and the injury meant I spent more time studying than my peers, in more optimised and less enjoyable ways, to get the same result.
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#309I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…
On Mac, you could make a little Shortcut that accepts your text selection or maybe even a screenshot and sends it to AnkiConnect to make a new note. Add this Shortcut to your share sheet and you can create new notes from any app. Later, go over the notes in Anki and add questions or if really lazy send the backsides to an LLM to create those questions.
Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
#310I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…
I've written my own flashcards app (Fresh Cards) and once in a while, users ask if there's a way to import flashcards from things like web pages and PDF files, but to be honest, I still don't know how it would work, so maybe you can help me. From a user standpoint, would it be an interactive process where you highlight things and then click a button to say "turn this into a flashcard", or would it be an automated too…
I was an early user of FreshCards, and it’s a beautiful app, but creating cards was too much work. No share sheet or similar integration.
The easiest thing, which I believe I suggested, was highlight->action to create a new card front, and highlight->action to creat the back or a new front. It needs to work well casually in general, and easy when focused.
I’m sure AI could theoretically help but not sure it’s necessary. Part of the benefits of most cards is creating them yourself.