Anki

[Ohdanigirl]

Ok have seen this mentioned here at least twice with regard to memory work. So I decided to learn more about it. Can those of you who are familiar with Anki help me out? How do you create multiple users? How do you add the decks? Basically how do you get started? Thanks!

 

Danielle

[Kuovonne]

I have one deck per person. I put *everything* in that deck - phonograms, math facts, poems, prayers, skip counting, grammar rules, presidents, geography, etc. I usually type my cards in manually, but if I want to add a bunch of cards at once, I import them. I tend to add new cards whenever I find something I want Sparkle to memorize, and then leave them as "new" until she is ready to memorize them.

 

Sparkle spends about 10 minutes per day reviewing her deck. Everything is all mixed up together.

 

I have Anki set up to zero new cards per day. When I notice that she's done with her deck very quickly for several days in a row, I manually start a bunch of new cards.

[HeidiKC]

I have one deck per person. I put *everything* in that deck - phonograms, math facts, poems, prayers, skip counting, grammar rules, presidents, geography, etc. I usually type my cards in manually, but if I want to add a bunch of cards at once, I import them. I tend to add new cards whenever I find something I want Sparkle to memorize, and then leave them as "new" until she is ready to memorize them.

 

Sparkle spends about 10 minutes per day reviewing her deck. Everything is all mixed up together.

 

I have Anki set up to zero new cards per day. When I notice that she's done with her deck very quickly for several days in a row, I manually start a bunch of new cards.

 

Just wondering why you keep them all in one huge deck? Just so she has a more interesting variety of stuff to memorize, rather than a bunch of math facts, etc.? Can you make separate decks, but shuffle them or something so that you can choose to review them separately or mixed together?

 

I first saw your other post about this today and it looks SO cool! But like a lot of work getting it all in there!

[Amber in AUS]

:lurk5:

[Kuovonne]

Just wondering why you keep them all in one huge deck? Just so she has a more interesting variety of stuff to memorize, rather than a bunch of math facts, etc.? Can you make separate decks, but shuffle them or something so that you can choose to review them separately or mixed together?

 

I use one big deck per person so each person has only one deck to review and manage. I figure that if Sparkle can't remember something in a mixed subject review, then she doesn't really have it memorized. I don't see any benefit to having more than one deck per person. (Similarly, each person must have his/her own deck -- kids can't share decks, although you can easily import the same facts into each kids' deck.)

 

You could have separate decks for different subjects, but you can't easily shuffle them and then later separate the cards. I do use tags to sort facts into topics, but the tags are more for my management and I don't have Sparkle use them when reviewing. You can selectively review one subject at a time by suspending and unsuspending certain tags, but I think that is too much work for no benefit.

 

I first saw your other post about this today and it looks SO cool! But like a lot of work getting it all in there!

 

Anki really is cool. It takes a bit of getting used to. But once it is setup and you are in the routine of doing it every day, it is totally worth it. I couldn't imagine reviewing memory work any other way.

[Dee in MI]

I use several decks for each person. When I mixed math and Latin, it went poorly, and I sure can't see mixing Spanish and Latin.

 

I do a deck for each resource. When I learn from a book, I start a new deck for that book, and add to it as I go along.

[Kuovonne]

Some more thoughts on how I use Anki ...

 

I could see having a separate deck for foreign languages, especially for similar foreign languages. We only do Chinese vocabulary, and it is different enough from English and our vocabularies are small enough that keeping foreign language mixed with everything else has worked for us. I also make heavy use of custom card models, which makes having everything in one deck easier to manage.

 

I also pre-teach everything before it goes into Anki. Supposedly you don't have to do this, but I find it works better for us. So, for example, as Sparkle memorizes a new batch of math facts in our math program, I activate that batch in Anki. If Sparkle is memorizing a new poem, she practices it at our morning meeting, and only after she can recite it from memory perfectly at morning meeting does that poem go into Anki.

[Ohdanigirl]

So how do you set up multiple users? And how do you do the poems? Do you put the title on the front and poem on the back of the "flash card". Thanks.

 

Danielle

Edited July 23, 2010 by USDGAL

[Kuovonne]

So how do you set up multiple users?

 

For us, each user gets her own deck. I just create a new deck per person and import whatever cards I want for her.

 

And how do you do the poems? Do you put the title on the front and poem on the back of the "flash card".

 

Yup, that's how I enter the poems. Title and author on the "front" and the text of the poem on the back. I don't put a poem into Anki until *after* the poem is memorized, so I only use Anki to review poems, not for the initial memorization.

[Ohdanigirl]

Great! Thanks for the help.

 

Danielle

[MeganW]

Yup, that's how I enter the poems. Title and author on the "front" and the text of the poem on the back. I don't put a poem into Anki until *after* the poem is memorized, so I only use Anki to review poems, not for the initial memorization.

 

 

So can you explain exactly how it works during the review? I am assuming that it pops up the name of the poem, and then does your DD *think* of the poem, and then flip the answer and compare? Or does she *type* the poem and the program compares to see if it is right?

 

Then after she gets it right, she tells the program whether she thought it was hard or easy to remember?

 

What if she gets it wrong? Does the program assume it was hard?

[Kuovonne]

So can you explain exactly how it works during the review? I am assuming that it pops up the name of the poem, and then does your DD *think* of the poem, and then flip the answer and compare? Or does she *type* the poem and the program compares to see if it is right?

 

Then after she gets it right, she tells the program whether she thought it was hard or easy to remember?

 

What if she gets it wrong? Does the program assume it was hard?

 

Anki prompts her with the title and author of the poem. She recites the poem, not type it. I don't have her type any of the answers. Typing is too slow compared to thinking/saying. Then she clicks "show answer" and reads the poem to see if she got it right. If she got it wrong, or couldn't remember it, she clicks "again." If she recited it easily without thinking, she clicks "easy." If she had to think a little, she clicks "good." If she had to think a lot, but still got it right, she clicks "hard." She judges whether she got it right or not and the difficulty level. The program doesn't know her answers and can't see inside her head; it just schedules the questions based on what she clicks.

 

After two years of (almost) daily use, Sparkle is quite used to reviewing her deck. I still sit next to her sometimes. She is pretty honest. I've explained to her that the program works best when she judges correctly.

 

Glitter has had her deck for a few months now, and she picked up the concept quite easily from watching her older sister.

[MeganW]

Sorry - one more question. How long does it take your kids to review? Is it based on the number of cards? Or can you limit it to x minutes per day?

 

Do you foresee a time when it becomes too time-consuming to continue? Like if you did Classical Conversations and had large volumes of material to learn - I hear people talking about it becoming too burdensome to keep up with the memory work over time. Would Anki solve this issue?

 

How strong does their reading need to be to take advantage of Anki? I see that you were using it with a kindergartener - was she reading way above grade-level?

 

Thank you so much - this is so helpful!

[Kuovonne]

Sorry - one more question. How long does it take your kids to review? Is it based on the number of cards? Or can you limit it to x minutes per day?

 

You can have Anki limit reviews on number of minutes or number of questions. Any unanswered questions will come up next time. My kids usually spend 5-10 minutes on Anki per day. Most days Sparkle is on the high end, and most days Glitter is on the low end. I tend to control the amount of reviews by staggering in new material.

 

At first it bothered me if there were reviews left over, but I have come to accept that it is better to stop before the kids get tired. One more day doesn't make much of a difference. However, I have found that it gets daunting if you skip too many days in a row. Mondays are our longest review days because we usually forget to review our decks over the weekend, and have double the normal number of cards to review. When we went on vacation without reviewing our decks, it took us over a month to get caught up. However, we did eventually get caught up just working the same number of minutes per day and not adding any new cards.

 

Do you foresee a time when it becomes too time-consuming to continue? Like if you did Classical Conversations and had large volumes of material to learn - I hear people talking about it becoming too burdensome to keep up with the memory work over time. Would Anki solve this issue?

 

I see spaced review software as the *only* way to maintain (vs. simply memorize in the first place) huge volumes of material. We don't do Classical Conversations, but I can't imagine trying to review 3+ years of information any other way. On the other hand, having a large deck of information is very simple with Anki because (1) it takes no physical space unlike index cards or binders, (2) the computer takes care of scheduling of individual items and with each review the interval between reviews grows. The biggest difficulty is in figuring out how to design the questions and answers.

 

I don't ever see Anki becoming too time-consuming. I can envision my kids continuing with their decks into high school and college. I would have loved to have something like Anki when I was memorizing formulas and facts in high school science and math.

 

How strong does their reading need to be to take advantage of Anki? I see that you were using it with a kindergartener - was she reading way above grade-level?

 

Sparkle could already read well when I found Anki. I was planning on waiting until Glitter could read before giving Glitter an Anki deck; however, she kept begging for her own deck, so I caved even though she can't read fluently yet. I read the questions to her. She tells me the answer. I tell if she got it right. She tells me if it was hard, good, or easy. Glitter's deck is very small; it is mostly remembering phonogram sounds, recognizing quantities 1-10, personal information (phone number, address, etc.) and her favorite math facts.

Edited February 8, 2011 by Kuovonne

[MeganW]

her favorite math facts.

 

That makes me laugh! I thought I was the only person in the world who had favorite math facts, and math facts I hate! :)

 

Thank you!!

[Ohdanigirl]

I just have to add, that we love ANKI. I am still learning, but it has been great.

 

Danielle

[RanchGirl]

This sounds like it might be very useful for my boys. Would it work well with IEW's Poetry Linguistic Development?

 

Is there an app to run it on an iphone/itouch/windows phone?

[Kuovonne]

This sounds like it might be very useful for my boys. Would it work well with IEW's Poetry Linguistic Development?

 

Is there an app to run it on an iphone/itouch/windows phone?

 

I find Anki is best for maintaining memory work, after it has been initially memorized outside of Anki. I'm not familiar with IEW's Poetry Linguistic Development, but I do use Anki with poetry. We memorize the poems outside of Anki first, then I put them into Anki to review. Anki will schedule reviews less frequently that the "Every Poem Every Day" recommended by IEW. With reviews scheduled by Anki, the retention rate will be less than the retention rate of Every Poem Every Day, but the total time spent reviewing will be significantly less.

 

There is an iPhone/iTouch app for Anki. However, it is *very* pricy. Downloading the desktop version and try it out first first. You need the desktop version to set up your deck even if you use the iPhone app for reviews.

[RanchGirl]

I find Anki is best for maintaining memory work, after it has been initially memorized outside of Anki. I'm not familiar with IEW's Poetry Linguistic Development, but I do use Anki with poetry. We memorize the poems outside of Anki first, then I put them into Anki to review. Anki will schedule reviews less frequently that the "Every Poem Every Day" recommended by IEW. With reviews scheduled by Anki, the retention rate will be less than the retention rate of Every Poem Every Day, but the total time spent reviewing will be significantly less.

 

There is an iPhone/iTouch app for Anki. However, it is *very* pricy. Downloading the desktop version and try it out first first. You need the desktop version to set up your deck even if you use the iPhone app for reviews.

 

 

thanks for the tips, I will check it out!