Feb 22 2009
The Best Tools To Make Online Flashcards
There are an incredible number of free sites where you can create and study flashcards online.
In reviewing many of them, I looked at this criteria:
* Is it available free-of-charge?
* Is it easy to use?
* Does it provide some “value added benefit” (besides just sticking a word on one side and a definition on the other of a virtual card) that would make it particularly accessble and engaging to English Language Learners and others?
I was only able to find three sites that met this criteria, and they’re the ones that made this “The Best…” list.
Here are my picks for The Best Tools TO Make Online Flashcards:
Number three is Study Stack. The online flashcards are indeed very basic (and very easy for both students and teachers to create). However, in addition to flashcards, you can also make hangman games, word searches, and many more activities. In fact, it’s also on The Best Sites For Making Crossword Puzzles & Hangman Games list.
There’s a tie for the number one ranking. One is an incredible site from Japan called iKnow!. It doesn’t have many English learning lists already on the site, but you can create your own. It provides audio support for the text, and you can apparently add images (though I’ve had difficulty figuring out exactly how to do so). The audio support is a huge plus, though the fact that it’s not quite as easy to create new cards as the other two sites is the one negative.
The other site tied for number one is ProProfs, which is also on The Best Ways To Create Online Tests. It’s very simple to use and to grab images off the web to add to the flashcards. You can also add videos. However, the one drawback is that you can’t provide audio pronunciation support for the cards.
Ediscio is the newest addition to this list. You can create, and use, flashcards very quickly and easily, and grab images and videos off the Web to insert them in the virtual cards. It’s a German site that has just added the ability to have its site in English, and it appears they haven’t worked out all the kinks yet in that transition. So, one negative is that after you register on the English page (registration, by the way, is quite easy), you are brought to a page in German. Then, you have to go to the bottom of the page and figure out what the word in German is for Language, and then switch it to English. I suspect they’ll fix this problem pretty quickly, though.
Quizlet is another addition to this list. In addition to letting you create and study flashcards, it also lets you study the words in “game” forms. It also allows voice recording for some features.
Feedback, as always, is welcome.
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5 responses so far
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Larry: Thank you for the mention of ProProfs. You are right – the missing audio support is surely a needed feature for ProProfs and one that we plan to work on.
We now even have a suggestions section where suggestions can be publicly posted & voted on, and our status tracked.
http://www.proprofs.com/suggestions/browse/?category=Flashcards
It may interest your readers to know that next week we are launching support for private and password protected flashcards.
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Nice review. Have you tried this free tool – http://mymentor.ru ?
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I’ve just come across something called BrainFlips which also allows you to enter images as well as images, audio, and video. There are 3 viewing modes, and a timer can be set to flip the cards. Wiki decks can be created and edited collaboratively. It is also possible to enter alternate answers and create multiple choice cards. I think my kids will find this one very cool. You can see my write-up in the blog for the Wilkes University Instructional Media Master’s program (http://wilkesinstructionalmedia.blogspot.com/) next week or at my own Small Changes; Big Returns blog in Posterous.
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Sue,
I’ve been messing around with BrainFlips, putting together a K level vocabulary resource on the senses. Here’s what I got so far. I’m working on dialup, so there’s no video.
http://brainflips.com/study-flashcards/595
Welcome all feedback.
PJVermont
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Thank you, Larry, for the list.
I’ll check out proprofs and I liked their interface – you were right, it’s really simple.
As for my personal experience, I use quizlet.com – even my 10-year old students figured out how to use it. And they do like the gaming options ))
You can also create groups there where you can prepare flashcard sets for different groups of students.
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