I found Flash Card Machine a few years ago and have been recommending that to students ever since. It’s not the most techie site in the world but it gets the job done. Now that my students have gadgets, some are using apps like iFlipr to create cards to use on their mobile devices.

While I love the idea of using flash cards on a mobile device, I don’t have an iPhone (yet, I am very much tempted to get one as teachers get a significant discount on AT&T plans), my Microsoft Zune’s screen is much too small for such a program (and I haven’t found one that would work on a Zune anyway), and I can’t find an app in the Windows Mobile Marketplace that would allow me to create my own flash cards.

I was looking online recently for another flash card program that I might like better than Flash Card Machine and stumbled across a new (to me) Flash cards program the other day called “Flashcards” by Microsoft Education Labs.

It caught my eye immediately because:

1. In general I tend to love Microsoft products (I’ll admit it, I do)
2. The interface is pretty
    
3. You can have any combination of text, image, and sound on the front and the back ( a lot of programs limit you to making such choices on one side only
4. There are three different study modes (most other online programs only have 1):
   1. Review mode – Where you look at the front and back side by side like this

      

   2. Study mode – which, as their Blog states it, is based on the “honor system” and you quiz yourself like this:

      

   3. Type It In mode – compares what you type in the box with the correct answer.

      

5. You can swap fronts and backs to have an altogether different study experience.
6. If you start practicing your cards on one computer, and continue on another, it will pick up where you left off.
7. You can print a report of your progress**(see note below)
8. Or you can view your progress by looking at the bottom of the screen where it says Keep trying or Good Memory. As you improve, the cards you know the best move to the right side of the screen where it says Good Memory

**

When I used this with my students I discovered two things:

1. Requires Silverlight which isn’t installed on all of the students’ machines. So I had to log them off and log on myself and install it before they could try it out
2. The print a report feature only seems to work immediately after you have finished a Study or Type It in Session. Students who didn’t print at that time didn’t have the report later. I wish there was a feature that would enable students to access reports after the study session.

I’m using the flash cards to prep for the GRE exam which is one of my goals for this summer.

I first heard of Evernote a couple of years ago when Peter and I attended a Digital Life conference. At the time, I was using Microsoft’s OneNote for lesson plans and notes and wasn’t really looking for anything new. If I am remembering correctly, it was just software at the time and didn’t have an online option (I tried looking this up but they don’t appear to have their history listed on their site.)

Flash forward to now and Evernote has software for your computer (PC or Mac), your phone, and an online version. You can learn more about some of the details behind Evernote here. I mainly use the online and phone versions of Evernote, however I recently installed the software on my work computer as well for a reason I’ll explain in a bit.

I use the online version every day. I keep my lesson plans in it so I’m constantly updating it throughout the day. I have organized mine into several notebooks in an attempt to keep myself organized. Here’s a look at my notebooks:

Remember those lists I mentioned earlier? I’ve starting keeping my lists and notes in Evernote as well. Every week I make my grocery list in the online version of Evernote and then access it from my phone using the mobile version. It is so much more convenient to scroll through the list on my phone instead of digging through my purse for whatever scrap piece of paper I jotted it down on. I usually add our weekly menus to the list as well as because its then available on my phone AND online so I’m ready to tell my hubby what’s for dinner when he asks, and usually this happens right after lunch each day – I guess because he is thinking about food?

Evernote also has a Web Clipper feature which allows you to highlight anything you are interested in saving online – pictures, text, links, etc… –and save it directly into your Evernote. If you install the software, the Web Clipper feature comes with it, otherwise you can install a plug-in into the Firefox browser. This is why I decided to install the software at work. Doing so also installed the clipper option into Outlook so I can right click on email messages and add them to my Evernote software which then links to the online version. I’ve been using this lately with daily emails I receive from educational news websites because I don’t often have time to read them at work.

Finally, there’s another feature of Evernote that I just learned about tonight – Evernote + Twitter. Start following “myen” and soon you will receive a DM (Direct Message) from myen with a link to click which will link your Twitter account to your Evernote account. You can then DM myen with notes to post in your account privately (without showing up on your Twitter) or you can add @myEN to the body of any of your public tweets and then your message will be posted on Twitter and sent to your Evernote account. I just tried it and received the link to set things up in under four minutes.

I do still keep handwritten notes and I still love to make my lists. I also still use OneNote, but Microsoft hasn’t offered a web version, and that’s my favorite part of Evernote. Its an information organizing solution that I’m glad I have incorporated into my every day life. 

Recently, Dell sent my work laptop back from Depot Service. While it appears to have fixed some of the issues that it had (the fan, power supply, and LCD screen were replaced), the Windows install is messed up. I was about halfway through a repair install of Windows when it died so now it gets stuck there for some reason. I’m at the point where I’m probably just going to wipe the entire thing and start over.

The laptop I ordered for myself, the HP Envy,

still has not arrived. It’s currently in

That is very frustrating for me because I can literally reach out and touch Linwood from Wilmington. Well at least I think I can. I don’t actually know where it is but given how close PA and Delaware are to each other it can’t be that far, right?

Anyway.

Back to how my recent epic failure with my laptop impacted my daily life.

I have a lot of files and resources that I need to access from home AND at work. This wasn’t a big deal prior to the death of my laptop because I took it back and forth. All 17 inches of it. It was quite heavy but this really had been the easiest way for me to deal with everything. I had my e-mail in Outlook, lessons plans in OneNote, pictures in Lightroom, and assorted other resources.

My first priority was getting my e-mail set up again in Outlook 2007. I like to use Outlook for all of my e-mail as I’m not a fan most webmail interfaces. However, if you aren’t set up to use Microsoft Exchange (we aren’t) this means that your e-mail is stuck on one computer if you pull it off of the server. I wanted to find a way to be able to get to the work e-mail I had pulled off the server without taking a laptop back and forth.

Outlook has something called a PST file. If you want to learn more about that go here. Essentially this means that all of your Outlook data – contacts, e-mails, calendar info., etc… is inside this one file.  This brings my to an online tool I’m using to help me have access to that content…

Windows Live Mesh

I’ve used Mesh for over a year now. With Mesh, you install software that essentially runs in the background of your computer. It looks like a little blue ball and sits in your system tray (the area typically by your clock).

Mesh enables you to synch your files between all of your devices (multiple computers – desktops and/or laptops and phones with web access).

Mesh also enables you to remotely access other computers in your Mesh (assuming they are on of course). By using the Live Mesh Remote Desktop, you can get to all your files and folders on those other computers and even use software that is on those computers but not on the one you are currently using. I haven’t had a chance to try that yet but it sounds super cool.

I have Mesh running on all of my computers and have added my Outlook PST file to my Mesh as well. This means that if I needed to access my Work Outlook content from home all I need to do is open up that PST file and poof! My Outlook at home is then loaded up with all of my Work content. I wish it synched simultaneously but this works for now. I’ve used Mesh to synch my OneNote files quite effectively as well but I’ll talk about that in another post.