Flashcards Deluxe Introduction
A huge help when learning any new subject with new vocabulary, dates, times, and events are flashcards. Some people prefer the old fashion method of using 3×5 notecards; however, if you don’t want to carry around thick rubberband stacks of cards, a very useful and handy way to create flashcards is through the Flashcards Deluxe app offered on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android phones.
My first experience using the Flashcards Deluxe app was creating Japanese vocabulary flashcards for the Elementary and Intermediate Japanese classes at Colorado College. The ground work, while a little time consuming, is completely worth it and a total value in helping learn, memorize, and retain Japanese vocabulary, especially on the block system. These flashcards can be used for any subject from Art History to languages, pretty much anything involving memorization. When creating the flashcards , you can use pictures, sound, and text, so, overall, it is a pretty well-rounded app.
While there are many way to go about uploading your cards to your devices. I will show how to create and upload your flashcards via the Flashcards Deluxe website. I will include other information on different ways of uploading your material, and include the links and attachments to such information. But for the purposes of this blog, I will mainly be giving instructions for flashcards using the programs Excel, using the app website to upload the flashcards, and tips for how to work with the flashcards once they are on the iPod. This app only cost $3.99, and if you are the on-the-go type, who likes using flashcards to study, this app is completely worth the purchase.
Creating Your Excel Document
To begin making your flashcards, you must first create an excel document. If you are only doing a small deck, for one device, adding the cards manually should be okay, but if you are doing a lot of cards for many chapters or subjects there is an easier and better way to create a mass amount of files.
The excel document you create will need different things depending on what aspects you want for your flashcards (i.e. if you only want text or text and pics). This will determine how many headings you will have. The examples I will be using are the Japanese flashcards, which had text and pictures only.
So when you create your excel document, you want three different headings: Text 1, Text 2, and Picture 1. The headings match what will go with what, and the order it will appear on the card. So anything listed under Text 1 heading will be the text that appears on the front of the flashcard. Anything under the Text 2 heading will appear on the back of the flashcard. The text under the Picture 1 heading is the names of image files that will appear on the front of the flashcard.
After you have created your headings, type the text you want to appear on the front of the card in column A. With the example above, I wanted the English word to appear first on the Japanese flashcards. In column B, write the text you want on the back of the card. For the Japanese flashcards, I wanted the Japanese translation of the word on the back. In column C, type in the name of the picture file you want to correspond with the flashcard. So in this instance, I found a PNG picture file of money, named it money, and typed in the name WITH the file extension. This picture will appear on the front of your flashcard along with your text from column A.
Note: When uploading the flashcards later on, the website will not register the text under the picture heading if the file extension is not included. The file extension is .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, etc.
Uploading Your Flashcards
After you have created your excel document and flashcards you should be ready to upload your flashcards online. If you have pictures or sound files, I recommend making a folder for each of them and label which chapter the sound or image files correspond to. For example, for my Genki II, Chapter 22 vocabulary list I also created a folder in which I put all of the images I used for these flashcards into one folder labeled “Genki II, Chapter 22”. This helps keep the different components of your flashcards organized, especially if you are making flashcards for a lot of chapters.
Once all the pieces to your flashcards are organized, go to the following website: http://orangeorapple.com/Flashcards/Default.aspx
This is the link to the Flashcard Deluxe main page. In the top right corner, there are 4 links. Click the link that says “Upload”. Once you click this link you will be directed to a page that looks like this.
This is where you will upload the text of your flashcards. In the box labeled “Deck Code”, you will enter in a unique name for your deck. This will be the code you enter in to download the flashcards to your iPod/Android. The deck code name can have no spaces, and does not have to be incredibly complicated, but something that not anyone can think of (i.e. arthistory [way toooo easy] vs ch01artsrv1 [just right]). For my deck code name the format I used was the abbreviation of the book name, the lesson number, and the date the flashcards were created. Whatever your deck code naming strategy may be, I advise copying your deck code name and pasting into the excel document corresponding with those flashcards. That way, if you forget a piece or all of the code for those flashcards, it is saved along with the deck.
Below the Deck Code field, there is a field labeled “Deck Name”. The Deck Name is going to be the name that appears along with your flashcards. If you do not choose to have a Deck Name, then the deck code name will appear as the title of your deck. The Deck Name can be anything you want. For my Japanese flashcards I just used the book volume and chapter (Ex. Genki II, Chapter 22). A Deck Name makes things look nicer and easier to find.
The next section will be a continuation of this process. See you on the other side!
Uploading Your Flashcards Pt. 2
After you have thought of an ingenious Deck Code and Deck Name, there is a field below those two called “Flashcard Text”.
Go to your Excel document and select all of your text. Copy the selection and paste your text into the field labeled “Flashcard Text”. When you select the text in the Excel Document make sure that you also select the cells with you heading labels. If you are just uploading text and no pictures and sound, it will download to your iPod/Android just fine. However, if you do have picture and sound files, when you go to upload them the website will tell you that there are no picture and sound files indicated in the document you have pasted to the “Flashcard Text” field. To be on the safe side, just copy the headings. They will NOT appear as flashcards. Scouts honor.
Once you have pasted your text into the “Flashcard Text” field, at the top, right corner of the flashcard text box there is a button called “Upload Flashcards”. Click this button, and under the Flashcards Deluxe heading a message in green should appear that says, “Flashcards uploaded. Click ‘Upload Pictures’ to upload your pictures/sounds for this deck.”
The next section will talk about uploading Pictures/Sounds.
Uploading Pictures and Sounds
So now that you have the text of your flashcards uploaded, it is time to add the pictures and sound (if you have sound files). Now, if you are not just creating one or two flashcards (which I imagine you aren’t), you will have a lot of picture and/or sound files to accompany the text. Uploading the pictures one-by-one will not only be a headache, but tedious and time consuming. An easy way to upload all your picture/sound files all at once is to create a zip/compressed file. A zip file will hold all you image/sound files in one document, which the website will then “unzip” and upload all of your files at once. To create a zip/compressed file on Mac OSX, it is quite simple. Just select all of the files that you want to compress and right click on one of the selected images. You should see an option that says “Compress Items”. Click this option.
Note: If you do not right click on one of the selected images, the images you highlighted will be deselected and you will not see the compress option.
A file should appear that is named “Archive.zip”. This is the file you will upload to the Pictures/Sounds portion of the website.
On Windows PC
To make a zip file on a Windows computer you should do the following steps: Select the images/sound files you wish to compress. Right click on the selection and you should see an option that says “Send to”. If you put your cursor over this another menu will appear and the option “Compressed (zipped) folder”should be the first option on the on the list. Click this and a zip file should appear. When creating a zip folder, I recommend naming the folder something you can easily identify so that you do not have a million files with the name “Archive” and have no idea what’s in them.
After you have created your zip folder and named it respective to its contents, you are ready to upload the pictures. On the flashcard deluxe upload section of the website, in the top right hand corner there is a link that is labeled “Upload Pictures/Sounds”. Click on this link. You should come to a page that looks like this. On the left hand side, below the heading “To Upload”, there is a list of all the names of the pictures (or sound files depending on what you are uploading). These are all the picture/sound files that you will need to upload. Click on the button on the top left side that reads “Choose File”. Select the zip file you have just created.
Once you have selected your zip/compressed file, below that field, is a field labeled “Options”. You have 3 options: Convert Pictures to JPG- Max 600 x 600; Convert Pictures to JPG – Max 800 x800; or Don’t convert or resize pictures. It is up to you which option you choose, it is really dependent on your flashcards. If you want all your pictures to be the same size and jpgs then convert, but if you don’t want your pictures to change and you like them the way they are don’t convert them. From my experience, one option has not served me better than the other, but I leave it to your discretion.
After all of your choice have been made and the zip file selected, click the button below the options field that says “Upload File”. It may take a minute, so do not panic if the pictures do not upload instantaneously. You will know the pictures are all done and uploaded when the list of pictures in the left hand column appear in the right hand column under the header “Uploaded”. At the top in green letter the message “File uploaded. You are ready to download this deck from your iPhone.” will appear. You are now ready to download the flashcards to your iPod/Android device.
