If you are not cramming for an exam…and instead are like me…someone who wants to beef up their knowledge…I have some tips.

Quick notes about my interests and learning: For work I have some arcane computer science flashcards….hundreds of them. I am lucky enough to have someone working with me who pores through information and selects things that can give us an edge. Then I have my interests: TaeKwonDo ( I keep up up with my forms and history), Spanish, Latin, assorted facts my third grader asks about. 3600+ facts learned. A few hundred facts are in the hopper.

My Advice:

1. Don’t skip days. Your review numbers will go down if you stick with it…catching up is a beating.

2. Favor paced learning over binge learning. At one point I got my learning down and decided to tackle a flashcard set that had been on my list all at once…this can create a backlog of review items in a few days.

3. (Courtesy Will) if you get behind, or have a huge number of cards for review, go easy on yourself.

4. Favor repetition over perfection. I see this with my son, he wants to pause and try to get the card right. Better to flip it, remind yourself of the answer and keep moving. You’ll see the card again after 6 more cards. Repetition will burn the card into your brain…

These are my thoughts and I am sticking to them

YoYoBrain.com now adapts to your interests based on whether you are student, a teacher, a corporate trainer, part of an enterprise, or just people like us who are nuts about learning.

New updates to the site include some reporting features for Teacher/Student learning communities and Enterprise learning communities. The reports let you see which flashcards give learners the most trouble, as represented by the number of times the learner hits “missed” on their memorization drills.

I hear this question often. I am putting in my personal answer to this question as the blog is a good place for informal thoughts.

The answer is yes.... with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “yes AND there are unique tools to help you learn and remember those flashcards.” A second asterisk reads yes and a Mercedes is just another vehicle sporting an internal combustion engine.

YoYoBrain came about when we were looking for ways to learn and remember more effectively. We scoured the Web for help. We saw all those flashcard sites and programs. We tried many of them. All fell short of our needs. So we built what we needed. What we needed was more than a way to publish flashcards online and play a couple of goofy games with them. We needed a proven way to learn ASAP and ensure that we didn’t forget what we learn. Will Bunker – who had the idea to build YoYoBrain, can offer more background on this – his quest for a tool like this has been going on for the better part of a decade.

So “yes” YoYoBrain gives you flashcards, complete Web 2.0 networking utilities and management tools. That includes audio and pictures.

“No” that is not why I love it. I also don’t love it because I work on it. I have worked on many projects where it was hard to find the love.

I love YoYoBrain because it helps me gain mastery of facts more easily than anything else I have tried. One of YoYoBrain’s primary motives, and most powerful uses is the memorization tool.

A quick list of “why” follows, with more explanation to come:

1. The memorization tool makes it easy to memorize information you have not memorized before. I have not experienced a faster method to get through large amounts of information.

2. The memorization tool presents information you have memorized previously based on algorithms gleaned from brain research. The result is that you don’t forget what you learn.

3. The memorization tool allows you to set goals or pace yourself. You can tell it you want to get 10 new facts or day, or that you have to learn everything immediately, or by a certain date. Again, there are algorithms supporting this to make your approach as time efficient as possible.

4. The memorization tool focuses in on what you have not yet memorized, so no time is wasted reviewing things unnecessarily (though you can take control and review to your heart’s content).

In addition, YoYoBrain lets you enter notes, link to videos….it lets teachers, trainers or experts create topic maps, subject outlines, lesson plans and more. It provides reporting to help a teacher or a learner identify trouble spots. An organization or enterprise can create a closed community for knowledge management or training. On and on and on.

So for me, yes, it’s a flashcard site…. in the same way that a Prius or Mercedes is just another horseless carriage.

-Scott Levy