Flashcards for System Notes and Teaching
Posted: 20 Jan 2023, 08:27
The worst thing about a complicated bidding system is forgetting things. Most of us have a life outside of bridge and there's only so much time to study system notes, especially when your partner has created most of them. It's important to get the most benefit from that time.
I figured flashcards would work well for this, and looked around for software in that area. A system called Anki seemed to be well suited. It's designed for students in fields like medicine and law who have literally thousands of things to memorize. This software is quite sophisticated and thus overkill for the task here, but it's reliable, the default settings work well and the price is right.
As of this writing it's open source and free for Windows, Linux, MacOS and Android; for Apple mobile devices there's a one-off cost of about AUD $40 and that can be shared among multiple devices.
The core concepts behind it are Active Recall and Spaced Repetition. Active Recall means you are presented with a question and are supposed to think about it before seeing the answer. Spaced Repetition means you tell the app how difficult each question was and it will decide how soon to present it again to make best use of your time. Therefore in each study session the system decides what you should see and it's not at all like reviewing the same long collection of notes over and over. See more about that in the documentation here.
I've been using it with one of my regular partners for about a week and am already seeing benefits.
I figured flashcards would work well for this, and looked around for software in that area. A system called Anki seemed to be well suited. It's designed for students in fields like medicine and law who have literally thousands of things to memorize. This software is quite sophisticated and thus overkill for the task here, but it's reliable, the default settings work well and the price is right.
As of this writing it's open source and free for Windows, Linux, MacOS and Android; for Apple mobile devices there's a one-off cost of about AUD $40 and that can be shared among multiple devices.
The core concepts behind it are Active Recall and Spaced Repetition. Active Recall means you are presented with a question and are supposed to think about it before seeing the answer. Spaced Repetition means you tell the app how difficult each question was and it will decide how soon to present it again to make best use of your time. Therefore in each study session the system decides what you should see and it's not at all like reviewing the same long collection of notes over and over. See more about that in the documentation here.
I've been using it with one of my regular partners for about a week and am already seeing benefits.
