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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

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Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#371

Post by tdeck »

paulluuk wrote: post #367
kqr wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs I think this is a common misunderstanding. Half the benefit of SRS comes from working out what the flashcards are. You have to circle around a concept, look for similarities, differences, examples, generalisations, properties, etc. Is it hard work? Yes. Does it help understanding? Massively. This is also a very diffi…

> They try, write bad flashcards, don't see results, and give up. But if that's the case, then wouldn't a program that takes a long text (like a book) and creates GOOD flashcards, be way superior over someone making their own bad flashcards?

The quality of a card isn't absolute, it's personalized to the learner. There are ways to make an almost universally bad card (e.g. putting way too much information or a misleading image), but a really "good" card comes from the learner engaging with the material first before making the card.

The program doesn't know what's in the learner's head and what associations the learner will make. That's the benefit of making your own card.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#372

Post by prolyxis »

paulluuk wrote: post #367
kqr wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs I think this is a common misunderstanding. Half the benefit of SRS comes from working out what the flashcards are. You have to circle around a concept, look for similarities, differences, examples, generalisations, properties, etc. Is it hard work? Yes. Does it help understanding? Massively. This is also a very diffi…

> They try, write bad flashcards, don't see results, and give up. But if that's the case, then wouldn't a program that takes a long text (like a book) and creates GOOD flashcards, be way superior over someone making their own bad flashcards?

Or a person could have the program either critique their flashcards as they write them, or suggest new sorts of flashcards to create without doing the work for them by automatically generating them.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#373

Post by HSO »

aaldrick wrote: post #339
HSO wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you - I hadn't considered this.

Now I wanted it for myself and just made it. So at least I can confirm this works.

Only difference is I don´t actually use the sharesheet much so I do it with clipboard content: Step 1. Take screenshot or copy text. Step 2. Make a request to AnkiConnect and have it create a new card with clipboard in Anki.

Works flawlessly on Mac/Desktop but if you want to do it from mobile devices, you have to muck around with network permissions. Too much for this evening but this alone opens up possibilities.

Thanks for the stimulating question! :)

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#374

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

Macha wrote: post #302
aaldrick wrote: post #232

I 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: injec…

You can add my https://github.com/hiAndrewQuinn/audio2anki script to the space, in a similar position to subs2srs.

The big thing my script does differently is run Whisper locally to actually generate the subtitles from the video themselves. Most videos out in the real world don't come with convenient little SRT files bundled with them.

It doesn't yet shell out anywhere to automatically provide a translation, but that's more because I was already past that stage for most of its output reading-wise. It's explicitly tuned to make listening practice SRSable.

(I originally built this for learning Finnish. For the other 2 people here on that journey, https://finbug.xyz/ is where I've collected the other software I've built over the years for this.)

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#376

Post by gloomyday »

paulluuk wrote: post #367
kqr wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs I think this is a common misunderstanding. Half the benefit of SRS comes from working out what the flashcards are. You have to circle around a concept, look for similarities, differences, examples, generalisations, properties, etc. Is it hard work? Yes. Does it help understanding? Massively. This is also a very diffi…

> They try, write bad flashcards, don't see results, and give up. But if that's the case, then wouldn't a program that takes a long text (like a book) and creates GOOD flashcards, be way superior over someone making their own bad flashcards?

I can see that helping a beginner to get a lay of the land, but I see that as no more than training wheels.

I created bad flashcards for a long time. In the end, I just figured, constantly editing cards when I noticed issues was the best way to learn how to use flashcards properly.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#378

Post by phendrenad2 »

I gave up on spaced repetition systems, even my paid memrise subscription, because I couldn't find good flashcard sets. To create good flashcards, you need some domain knowledge. An AI can pick facts from wikipedia and quiz you on them, but it takes a real human to identify what knowledge is relevant and worth learning.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#379

Post by mfranzs »

_1tem wrote: post #231
covertcorvid wrote: post #126

RemNote ( https://www.remnote.com/ ) solves the problems people are mentioning about 1) The time it takes to make cards. RemNote allows you to take Notion-style block notes and quickly turn bullet points into flashcards using symbols. For example, you might be in class and make a bullet point in the format - The quick brown fox jumps over >> the lazy dog which you can later review as a flashcard that is automatically…

As a longtime Anki user I just want to say THANK YOU! Just downloaded RemNote for the first time and gave it a spin. I’ve been using Anki for years for language learning (Ukrainian and Russian and Arabic), but also for poetry memorization. Weird coincidence: a few days ago I was looking for an AI-powered flashcard creator: I get regular emails from curated sources that have lots of useful information, but I am too la…

RemNote founder here - been building RemNote for the past 8 years (4 in private for myself, 4 in public), and we're not going anywhere! SRS is the future.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#380

Post by mfranzs »

aaldrick wrote: post #232

I 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…

This is what we've built RemNote for! You can add your sources (PDFs, websites, YouTube, etc.) and create cards directly from them. Either with AI (click on a sentence => get an AI card), or by highlighting a sentence and writing your own card.

It's not at the OS level, but I think a focused standalone all-in-one experience is actually better. We've explored a chrome extension here that does something similar to what you suggest, but it somehow hasn't proven useful in practice. I always keep coming back to just doing everything directly in the tool (upload PDF, take notes, make cards), as it helps me focus deeply on what I'm learning.

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