Cool learning software: Mnemosyne
A couple weeks ago I came across an article about learning through spaced-repetition. The article claims that when you first learn something new you will tend to forget it rather quickly, but if you recall it at an optimal time (near when you would forget it) you will remember it for an even longer interval. As you continue to recall this information at these critical points the interval grows longer and longer, until it is measured in years. The article refers to software called SuperMemo, which can be purchased for the Windows operating system, but is not available for OSX, which I happen to use.
The idea of spaced-repetition was interesting enough for me to experiment. Initially I thought I might be stuck writing my own software, but fortunately I came across a very cool open source project called Mnemosyne, which works similarly to SuperMemo: it uses flash cards that quiz you on a piece of knowledge at critical times determined by its algorithm. Here’s an example of one of the cards in my system (from the European geography card deck):
Cards can include graphics, sounds, or text. You can import card decks or you can create your own. I’ve been using it for about about two weeks to study European geography and Spanish (in combination with LiveMocha). So far, I’ve found the system to be very helpful with both subjects, so I will continue the experiment. If you’re interested in learning a new subject, I would definitely recommend taking a look at this.