I teach high school English to underclassmen who skew towards “totally unmotivated”. I have been using spaced repetition principles for years (using games, puzzles, and other spaced reviews) to help with vocabulary and terminology. These do effectively engage many of the poorly motivated.
But recently, I feel like smartphones have become ubiquitous enough among students that I’m looking for software I could use as a quasi-official SRS companion app with my students. I think many of them would use it, but only if they experience very minimal frustration setting it up and running it. My wishlist:
(1) Free app on both Android and iPhone (I’d say it’s about 50⁄50 with my students)
(2) Companion web app with cloud sync to mobile apps.
(3) Very easy to use and update with new cards regularly. I would like to be able to post weekly deck additions on my teacher web page that students can add to their deck.
Anki, which I use for my personal learning, seems to come closest—but the $25 cost of the iPhone app is a problem, and I worry that using the web app on the iPhone be too much of a hassle. I also worry that the “add external cards to your deck” procedure is a bit too hairy as well.
Has anyone seen anything that comes closer to my needs than Anki? Thanks!
It has an app, it has a lot of the bells and whistles that Anki lacks (like a scoring/gamification system) that could be helpful with the population you are teaching, and it is all around a solid SRS system. The only thing I think it lacks are those Easy/Good/Hard buttons that Anki has to differentiate between how well you know the answer, but that’s something I can live without. I use both it and Anki on a day to day basis.
I just played around with Memrise, and it does indeed look perfect for my audience. I had begun my SRS search with gwern’s excellent exploration of the topic, where Memrise does not appear. Thank you so much!
I’m glad you like my recommendation. After you have used it for a while, perhaps consider writing up a post about your experiences teaching using an SRS. It’s a topic which could be very interesting, and I’m sure that many would wish to read such a report. I certainly would.
I need some advice on spaced repetition software.
I teach high school English to underclassmen who skew towards “totally unmotivated”. I have been using spaced repetition principles for years (using games, puzzles, and other spaced reviews) to help with vocabulary and terminology. These do effectively engage many of the poorly motivated.
But recently, I feel like smartphones have become ubiquitous enough among students that I’m looking for software I could use as a quasi-official SRS companion app with my students. I think many of them would use it, but only if they experience very minimal frustration setting it up and running it. My wishlist:
(1) Free app on both Android and iPhone (I’d say it’s about 50⁄50 with my students) (2) Companion web app with cloud sync to mobile apps. (3) Very easy to use and update with new cards regularly. I would like to be able to post weekly deck additions on my teacher web page that students can add to their deck.
Anki, which I use for my personal learning, seems to come closest—but the $25 cost of the iPhone app is a problem, and I worry that using the web app on the iPhone be too much of a hassle. I also worry that the “add external cards to your deck” procedure is a bit too hairy as well.
Has anyone seen anything that comes closer to my needs than Anki? Thanks!
Look into memrise.
It has an app, it has a lot of the bells and whistles that Anki lacks (like a scoring/gamification system) that could be helpful with the population you are teaching, and it is all around a solid SRS system. The only thing I think it lacks are those Easy/Good/Hard buttons that Anki has to differentiate between how well you know the answer, but that’s something I can live without. I use both it and Anki on a day to day basis.
I just played around with Memrise, and it does indeed look perfect for my audience. I had begun my SRS search with gwern’s excellent exploration of the topic, where Memrise does not appear. Thank you so much!
I’m glad you like my recommendation. After you have used it for a while, perhaps consider writing up a post about your experiences teaching using an SRS. It’s a topic which could be very interesting, and I’m sure that many would wish to read such a report. I certainly would.