Make Photo Flashcards for Studying with Flashcard Machine

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I make photo flashcards with the photo on the front for studying.

I am a big fan of memorizing through the use of flashcards.  When I was taking Japanese as an undergraduate, I used to cut up a sheet of 8.5x11 inch paper into 16ths giving me flashcards about this big.  I would write the kanji characters on one side and the pronunciation and English meaning on the other.  I had boxes of these little cards, all bound together in sets with rubber bands.  And I swear they were THE reason that I got good grades in memorization-heavy subjects like Japanese and Biology.  

Fast forward to now, thankfully for my current program I need to memorize fewer things, but I still think that flashcards are useful to drill concepts and ideas that I want to have quick brain access to.  Fortunately, there are now a ton of apps that help you to create and study flashcards.  Plus, many of them have built in games and quizzes that give you even more creative ways to learn.  But here is a problem that I have run into -- very few of the leading flashcard apps allow you to study using a photo on the front of the flashcard.  

So, why would you need that?  Well, one example is the one I just gave.  Unless you can type on your keyboard in Japanese kanji characters, I would need use a photo or screenshot of the characters for flashcard purposes.  Anatomy students need to know what this bone is or this muscle.  What about learning the states?  You aren't really going to write “second state to the left of Georgia” when you can just include a photo, right?  And here is my main use -- artworks.  When we travel, we like to go to art museums.  I've been teaching my kids about art history and the great artists since they were tiny, but I like them to know a set number of artworks that we will find in the museum and who created them.  There is really no way to study this with properly without having a photo on the front of the flashcard.  

Quizlet is the best known flashcard app and it does not allow you to do this.  You can put a photo on the back side of the card, but not the front.  And so it goes for most of the leading apps.  But I found one that does what I want: Flashcard Machine.  Not surprisingly, this app was created by a student taking art history at the University of Oregon.  I keep calling it an app, but really it's a website with an app for studying.  Here is the website -- there is no subscription fee, but you can see that it earns money through advertising.  If you make a contribution like I did, you can get rid of the pesky advertising.  

This is not meant to be a full app tutorial, but essentially Flashcard Machine allows you to create sets of flashcards on your own or with others, organize them by folders, mark favorites, and share them with others in a variety of ways.  But let me show you how to create photo flashcards.  

First hit this button to create a New Flashcard Set.  A set is the equivalent of my rubberbanded together sets of paper cards.  Now you need to give it, at a minimum, a title, a subject, and an education level in my case, this was not applicable.  You can also choose whether to make it available for others to access using the Flashcard Library.  Now hit this button to Save Set Details.  This wasn't totally obvious to me, but to add cards to this set, you need to choose either the Advanced Editor or the Quick Editor.  

Now, there are 2 ways to add photos to your cards.  The first way is easiest.  You save photos to your computer, go to the images tab, and drag and drop them onto there.  You can see I have a bunch of photos saved here.  If you've done this, you can add images to your flashcards using the Quick Editor.  So, go into My Sets, choose your set, and pick Quick Editor.  Clicking on the image icon brings up a list of the images that you've uploaded with a helpful thumbnail image.  Then you can put whatever you want on the Definition (or back side) of the card.  Like in this case, Rembrandt or Self Portrait at the Age of 63 or 1669 or all of these facts.

The only problem with this is that Flashcard Machine only gives you 3MB of space for images.  That's not a ton.  I probably have 50 images saved here, but I've used 1/3 of the space already.  To add your image by a link and to take advantage of some of the other features, like adding more information on the front (or Term side) of your flashcard, use the Advanced Editor, which is a bit more involved.  Again, this is not a full tutorial, but choosing to add a photo through the image screen generally doesn't give you any control over how big the image is presented, so you could end up with a card like this.  Instead, I like to add images through the HTML screen, where if you hit the button to insert an image, you can control the dimensions -- make sure you also choose to constrain proportions or you could have some seriously distorted images.  Along with your image, you can also choose to add text.  In this case, I'll enter the name of the artwork.  Then put the information I need to memorize on the definition or back side.  Anyway, you'll have to play around with these editing features a bit.  

Once you've created all of your flashcards, you can begin studying.  First, choose your flashcard set.  To do straight flashcard review, pick Start Study Session then make sure you have the right things chosen.  I want the term (or photo) first, then the definition, but you can reverse this.  I also want random order and I don't want Flashcard Machine to flip the cards for me.  Then hit Start Session.  You can click on the Flip Card icon to see the back of the flashcard, or hit the space bar.  Alternatively, you can download the app, sign into your account, and study from the app.  Choosing to repeat the card now will literally make it come right back up, choosing to repeat the card later puts it at the end of the flashcard desk to review.  

One other great feature is instead of choosing Start Study Session, you can choose Play a Game.  Quiz Me gives you 4 multiple choice options for each photo or term. Speed has you play against the clock.  And Pop Quiz has you type out the answer hangman style.  They are all fun ways to learn the same information.  

And that's really it.  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!