Learning Cards - a very good old wine in a new skin - QUIZLET

Learning cards have proven for decades to be an effectful learning tool. I used cards myself to get french vocab into my head as well my beloved chemical formula. The use for some students is evident and I always kind of envied my language teaching colleagues for having such a great tool to recommend to their students.

And so I was asking myself how to make use of cards for my biology and chemistry classes. My idea was to have those cards available for all my students all the time and have all the crucial vocabulary (e.g. formula and technical terminology) ready for them to study on their own, prepare themselves in advance and of course for myself to set up vocabulary tests for myself.

I found my partner in crime with

www.quizlet.com

I signed up for the free version and just 24 hours later bought the commercial login with will cost you a yearly fee.

So what is in there? How do I use it?

I set up specific classes, e.g. grade 9 chemistry. For each unit I will then create a cardset with the important vocab ( I am able to spice it up with pictures as well. Could there be anything greater than link a new name of a lab glassware to a picture of it or put the lewis formula of a chemical compound on the backside of its name).

Each cardset will then be linked with my moodle course.

And this is how it works in the context of the flipped classroom concept:

Homework:

• Students will access the cardset that I created and prepare the vocabulary. Well, this has cut down the number of missing homework by almost 100%. Because who is not able to learn 10 new cards of vocab. :)

Start of the lesson:

• I will check on the students being able to recall the new vocab they have learnt at home. Possible options are using quizlet itself during this phase, test it with a paper test or check the items by means of a moodle test.

Work phase - extension:

• My students will do experiments, solve past exam questions and work on other task which demand the knowledge of the new vocab and sometimes the definition of the technical term on the backside of the quizlet card as well.

After the lesson:

• Every single crucial piece of technical terminology is available for the students to revise and linked to the respective topic it was introduced with.
• Ideal for exam preparation.
• Ideal to catch up for students that join a class/ course at a later point of time than others.
• The reading function of the cards itself will give the students a pretty good idea of how to pronounce a word.

The stunner: 

There are quizlet apps available on almost any mobile platform from iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Kindle Fire and third party apps as well for e.g. Nook.

Actually students seem to enjoy learning with their high tech gadgets.

You are also able to embed the quizlets into your homepages, moodle courses and of course blogs.

The effect is maximum compared to the costs.

Furthermore there are thousands of ready to use cardsets for almost every subject.

Here is an example - albeit in German and chemistry.