I didnt see an education category, so this ended up in 'product'.

A friend of mine is studying for her GRE, going through vocabulary building flash cards. It took me back to the days when I was in a similar situation. Its tedious, boring, and in general not a whole lot of fun.

The solution - flash cards that flash! The idea would be some kind of electronic system (maybe plugged into your PDA or cell phone) that would have a woman (or man - you get to chose) in a trench coat, who flashes you whenever you get a word right. Incentive for hormone hyped teenagers to take more interest in studies.
-- energy guy, Dec 03 2005

//the days when I was in a similar situation.//

Eugh. Yeah, me too. Trying to remember Fourier & Laplace transforms melted my brain.
-- Jinbish, Dec 03 2005


Wouldn't it slow you down to have to enter the answer into some sort of electronic system, rather than just saying or thinking it?
-- jutta, Dec 04 2005


Perhaps it would improve their spelling abilities and keyboard communication skills, [jutta].
-- jurist, Dec 04 2005


Ahh, yes. Not to mention the profound effect on memory a movement of the hand may have. Indeed, if I think of a word and I give it a movement, then later on when I'm looking for the word and my movement could spur some computer based thingy to remember the context of that movement.

back to the topic... I'll be hacking away at one Dec. 20th. Oh, happy day.
-- daseva, Dec 04 2005


Dr Curry: Done - public: education: motivation

Jutta - Actually - the GRE is now electronic, so the practice would help
-- energy guy, Dec 04 2005


Since there are various learning styles and as a visual learner, well, I suppose...

Actually, to take it seriously, if the system made a random, permanent association between an odd or otherwise interesting image (one of them could be a naked person, sure) with a given concept--I think you are on to something...

In college and earlier, I used to create "cheat sheets" where a symbol/doodle would represent a question/answer set. It cuts study time down to nominal. i.e. Later, during the test just mentally visualise the symbols on the sheet and see the written answers. It's sorta cheating because you don't actually process the information. If lucky, this can last up to maybe 72 hours, but then...nothing.

Great to get through memorization type tests, definitely. Hmmm, [+] for idea seed, [-] for same, eventually boring, naked image. Intentional neutral I guess.
-- Zuzu, Dec 04 2005


I must be extremely naive - I imagined non-volatile memory devices fitted with xenon tubes.
-- coprocephalous, Dec 04 2005



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