Social Flash Cards

I just came across Quizlet a new web application for building quizzes, testing yourself with flash cards and sharing them with others. A very impressive site considering it is put together by a single developer (who is still in high school!).

Having studied a few languages (German, Mandarin and Japanese for those interested), I’ve had my fair share of flash cards. While I don’t think it is always an ideal way of learning, it does have it benefits. There are a number of tools and sites out there that allow flash card testing. Quizlet does this but very well with an amazing amount of polish. Solid UI, good usability, support for UTF-8 and lots of great little touches. The UTF-8 cards allow quizzing in non-western characters which is great for Japanese and Chinese.

I’ve had a very similar idea running around my head for a while now. Kudos to the developer for making it happen.

The added social benefit in the site are a real strength. Sharing your quizes, seeing the most incorrect questions and groups around a topic of interest. Naturally I had to join the Japanese language group.

One thing caught me as something great that is very overlooked in most web applications (especially social software). Print support. The site has some of the best support I have seen. Not an after though like most but something beneficial. Foldable print designs with dotted lines for cutting out and clear concise instructions on how to use.

Very impressive. Congratulations to Andrew Sutherland for an impressive job. Time for me to brush the cob webs off my Japanese vocab and get working on “JLPT”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLPT Level 3!