Custom flashcard issues

Hi,

I think the custom flashcard feature needs a bit of work to make it really useful: I've been trying to use it to set up a few sets with My Vocab since those are the words that I've struggled with. I'd really like to set up sets of about 100 words to make them manageable. 

Firstly an issue: I find that when I try to import, it only saves them sometimes, less than 50% of the time. Usually it says it saves it but the new ones are not actually added to the set. Sometimes it works.

But it would be helpful if:
1. There was an "add all" function. Adding hundreds of cards is really painful.
2. There was some way to "add new" cards. So if I set up a set with the first hundred, there is no way to know in a second set which of the cards are already in a set. Similarly, when I do a new lesson and add another 10 words, there's no way to know which ones are the new ones.
3. It would be great to shuffle the cards when going through them.
4. It would work better if you could hide the list while you're trying to add. Since I have to press "Add" on every single card individually, the list at the top keeps getting bigger and scrolling the import list down. 
5. Anki-style remembering of which cards have been rated easy and which are hard, and therefore rating the harder ones higher for redisplay.

Cheers,
Drew

Great points Drew,

I would add:

6. Ability to import cards from Flashcards and lessons. For example, wouldn't it be great for when we study for Module exams we could easily make a list of all words in the "hard," and "poor" categories of all seven lessons.  Same for Final Level exam. 

7. Robert has already suggested imports from outside vacab lists.

8. Why not be able to mark words from within lessons and send them to an entry file, or exisiting file in the custom flashcard function.

9. We should also be able to copy and rename flashcards sets from the public area or other people and add extra ones without losing the original, so we can build on sets but still save a copy of the original.  For example, when I created the List of Basic Hanzi Strokes" I wanted to build on it to make the List of Radicals as six of the strokes are the first six radicals.  Maybe I"m missing something but I ended up having to enter them again, rather than just take a copy of the Strokes files, renames it Radicals and start adding others.

10.  I have found no straight forward way to enter, or record audio files .  If one of the teachers has already recorded the word elsewhere one can copy the HTTP url, but why can't we use the record fucntion to make our own?  Or am I just missing the instructions?

Also, along another line, the Forum entry box is really "jumpy." I end up losing about 25% of my attempts to enter comments because the window randomnly jumps back to the lesson homepage and the text is lost.  On other blogs I've been on, the techs have been able to automatically, preserve comment text in such instances by auto-saving it under a temp title. 

Cheerrs

As I said before, being able to import from outside source is my number one issue. I have used Quizlet and have lots of flashcard sets there ready for import.

If I highlight a word or phrase from the lesson and click on the ABC icon, it will bring up a list of matching items which we can then add to MyVocab. I would like something similar when I am creating custom flash cards. The nice thing about this is that it contains everything I need - English, Pinyin, Hanzi and voice.

It would be nice to be able to assign a custom flashcard set to a lesson so that I can easily bring it up when studying lessons. For that matter, it would help if we could quickly navigate between lessons and flashcards.

Finally, check out Quizlet if you want to see additional ideas on how they put flashcards to work. This includes on the fly quizzes based on your flashcards and various games complete with leaderboards. You can find my Quizlet flashcard sets by looking for my usercode. I use the same name there that I use here.

+ A voting system so that I could vote all of these 'up'. :)

What can I say that hasn't already been said?  Other then I agree with David in that the audio function is confusing.  Even after the launch of the new system, I tried out the flashcard system, and the audio section of the flashcards was not really working properly.  So I figured, give it a week and then come back, but still nothing.  Is there something that I'm missing?

I don't want to just make these flashcards to help myself out, but also to help out the other users here at Rocket.  I want to give back to a place that has already given me so much.

Hi all - Thanks for the feedback. We are working on a few of these issues. Probably the most important one is the ability to import from notepad. I have made a list of the other suggestions and will see what we can do.

Hi joletil,

Not sure I understand your question 100%, but what I generally do is:

I always add words to My Vocab as I'm going through the text. I stick to words that I don't know or that I know I need practice with. Periodically, I go into flashcards and create new sets so I can practice. I also tend to add words that I've written down from my tutor (outside rocket).

This is where it gets a bit problematic as, for the reasons outlined at the start, it is really only from memory that I know what is already in a flashcard set. It doesn't matter too much of course so I just double up, but it would be great to have some sort of filtering/sorting in place to assist adding flashcards that are not in other sets, have not been used much, have been ranked by me as difficult, etc.

Cheers,
Drew