I think I've said this before, but I'm so grateful to SiW for getting me over my Anki intimidation and into using it. One of my kids is really into birds, so when I suggested we work on the 40 most common birds via Anki she didn't have the patience to wait for me to figure out how to whittle down the Ultimate Birds deck and instead we've been working on all the birds in our state. This meant that the other day when she encountered a slide with five birds that all look kind of like "seagulls" she was able to immediately identify that two were gulls, one was a fulmar, one was a tern, and one was an albatross. And even if I only immediately saw the tern despite doing the cards with her everyday I've noticed in my own reading that there are all these words that used to just redirect to "that's some kind of bird" in my head and now have meanings and personalities and associations with wacky behaviors captured in the photos on the Anki cards. I totally agree about the caring makes you learn and learning makes you care loop, but I always come back to the fact that caring and learning are infectious. Great Anki cards are great (and the SiW cards are for sure my kids' favorite), but in my experience kids will forgive imperfect Anki cards if they see adults caring and learning alongside them (which of course SiW also involves, and I try to facilitate in lots of other ways too).
Thanks, Becky! I got a good private letter from a friend, suggesting that the Science is WEIRD cards could be better. I'm curious as to your thoughts:
"For your ribs cards you could have these:
1: Many people say these body parts are for protection, but they are wrong → Ribs
2: Ribs are covered with this → Muscle
3: What's the organ that covers your lungs? → Ribs
4: If ribs were for protection they would likely also cover this body part → Belly"
He recommends breaking down Anki cards into tiny units, and points out that, with Anki cards at least, one doesn't need to be conservative with how many one makes.
From experience, I know that what he's suggesting is, indeed, a better way of ensuring conceptual memory — and that's super important! It makes me think that I should switch to making cards in this format.
Yet I feel like something important is lost in breaking them down like this. Maybe it's a sense of whimsy? A sense of magic?
If that's what it is, I'm not sure how important that is. Alessandro suggested that each way of understanding (Mythic, Romantic, Philosophic) might nudge us toward a slightly-different format of card, and I'm wondering if maybe the cards I have right now are "Romantic" — they maximize the weirdness of each fact.
Trouble is, I don't actually use the cards — I make them, instead! So I don't have a users-level experience of them. Do you (or anyone else who uses my SiW cards) have any opinions on this?
I do recommend you try learning something with the cards. You will learn a ton by eating your own dog food.
One way to keep the whimsy and still have cards that work best is to put more information into the front of the card but keep the back of the card to a fact.
You can do this even for “things you want to remind yourself of” - for example if your 2-year old says something cute, create a card with the quote with the question being “who said this at what age” (or two cards - both the same quote. One asks for the person who said it and one for the age they said it).
The card will come back on a regular basis and you will remember and smile.
No reason you can’t use the same method for funky facts you want to be reminded of.
Front of card -> reminder
back of card -> memorized given reminder
It is only the back of the card where you need/want a clear answer. The front of card can be anything.
(Another method we are using - make the front of cards “Pavlovs” for things you want to get FAST. For example: Figure: “father of…”. Back of card is Champlain - “father of New France”. But we can use the front of the card to train for speed in that case )
Ah. I did miss that it was a fill-in-the-blank. It's likely fine.
I would do it differently ("Ribs are covered in muscle for this purpose" -> breathing), and put in cards to force active recall of the other facts (right now the fact ribs are not for protection is passive), but my earlier objections don't apply
(At least to the rib card. I think they might still apply to the anthromorphize card. Maybe. But now that I look at it I see what you are doing with the underline now).
Yeah, I do think that in some cases "learning the rectangle" is increased by how these things are combined onto one card. But at the same time, the context is increased, and the association with the class that the fact comes from is increased which makes them easier to care about. If I notice that my kids seem to be shortcutting to an answer without the conceptual work happening it's easy enough for me to get that back to happening conversationally.
I tend to think that the perfect is the enemy of the good here: using the cards before you've had a chance to forget the material and then building a habit of using them is more important than the cards being perfect. We wouldn't be distraught if you made the change you describe, but don't feel a need for it either.
Who says that spaced repetition has to be boring? This is the post that has finally pushed me over the edge to start building a Leitner box with my kids. Even as an avid Anki user myself, I was unconvinced that I could get my kids to engage. Between this and Brandon's homeschool workshops- no longer.
It brings a tear to my eye to think about the PEOPLE that this method will create. People with passionate interests, strong identities and lasting memories of educational experiences. It brings such a strong sense of personal history and connection to the idea of education.
I think I've said this before, but I'm so grateful to SiW for getting me over my Anki intimidation and into using it. One of my kids is really into birds, so when I suggested we work on the 40 most common birds via Anki she didn't have the patience to wait for me to figure out how to whittle down the Ultimate Birds deck and instead we've been working on all the birds in our state. This meant that the other day when she encountered a slide with five birds that all look kind of like "seagulls" she was able to immediately identify that two were gulls, one was a fulmar, one was a tern, and one was an albatross. And even if I only immediately saw the tern despite doing the cards with her everyday I've noticed in my own reading that there are all these words that used to just redirect to "that's some kind of bird" in my head and now have meanings and personalities and associations with wacky behaviors captured in the photos on the Anki cards. I totally agree about the caring makes you learn and learning makes you care loop, but I always come back to the fact that caring and learning are infectious. Great Anki cards are great (and the SiW cards are for sure my kids' favorite), but in my experience kids will forgive imperfect Anki cards if they see adults caring and learning alongside them (which of course SiW also involves, and I try to facilitate in lots of other ways too).
Thanks, Becky! I got a good private letter from a friend, suggesting that the Science is WEIRD cards could be better. I'm curious as to your thoughts:
"For your ribs cards you could have these:
1: Many people say these body parts are for protection, but they are wrong → Ribs
2: Ribs are covered with this → Muscle
3: What's the organ that covers your lungs? → Ribs
4: If ribs were for protection they would likely also cover this body part → Belly"
He recommends breaking down Anki cards into tiny units, and points out that, with Anki cards at least, one doesn't need to be conservative with how many one makes.
From experience, I know that what he's suggesting is, indeed, a better way of ensuring conceptual memory — and that's super important! It makes me think that I should switch to making cards in this format.
Yet I feel like something important is lost in breaking them down like this. Maybe it's a sense of whimsy? A sense of magic?
If that's what it is, I'm not sure how important that is. Alessandro suggested that each way of understanding (Mythic, Romantic, Philosophic) might nudge us toward a slightly-different format of card, and I'm wondering if maybe the cards I have right now are "Romantic" — they maximize the weirdness of each fact.
Trouble is, I don't actually use the cards — I make them, instead! So I don't have a users-level experience of them. Do you (or anyone else who uses my SiW cards) have any opinions on this?
My comment :)
I see what you are saying.
I do recommend you try learning something with the cards. You will learn a ton by eating your own dog food.
One way to keep the whimsy and still have cards that work best is to put more information into the front of the card but keep the back of the card to a fact.
You can do this even for “things you want to remind yourself of” - for example if your 2-year old says something cute, create a card with the quote with the question being “who said this at what age” (or two cards - both the same quote. One asks for the person who said it and one for the age they said it).
The card will come back on a regular basis and you will remember and smile.
No reason you can’t use the same method for funky facts you want to be reminded of.
Front of card -> reminder
back of card -> memorized given reminder
It is only the back of the card where you need/want a clear answer. The front of card can be anything.
(Another method we are using - make the front of cards “Pavlovs” for things you want to get FAST. For example: Figure: “father of…”. Back of card is Champlain - “father of New France”. But we can use the front of the card to train for speed in that case )
Ed, maybe we're missing each other, here: the answer to that card IS just a short fact (it's "breathe").
Ah. I did miss that it was a fill-in-the-blank. It's likely fine.
I would do it differently ("Ribs are covered in muscle for this purpose" -> breathing), and put in cards to force active recall of the other facts (right now the fact ribs are not for protection is passive), but my earlier objections don't apply
(At least to the rib card. I think they might still apply to the anthromorphize card. Maybe. But now that I look at it I see what you are doing with the underline now).
Yeah, I do think that in some cases "learning the rectangle" is increased by how these things are combined onto one card. But at the same time, the context is increased, and the association with the class that the fact comes from is increased which makes them easier to care about. If I notice that my kids seem to be shortcutting to an answer without the conceptual work happening it's easy enough for me to get that back to happening conversationally.
I tend to think that the perfect is the enemy of the good here: using the cards before you've had a chance to forget the material and then building a habit of using them is more important than the cards being perfect. We wouldn't be distraught if you made the change you describe, but don't feel a need for it either.
Who says that spaced repetition has to be boring? This is the post that has finally pushed me over the edge to start building a Leitner box with my kids. Even as an avid Anki user myself, I was unconvinced that I could get my kids to engage. Between this and Brandon's homeschool workshops- no longer.
It brings a tear to my eye to think about the PEOPLE that this method will create. People with passionate interests, strong identities and lasting memories of educational experiences. It brings such a strong sense of personal history and connection to the idea of education.