Flash card app (1 Viewer)

The Flash Card Deluxe app for the iPod touch and iPhone allows users to create virtual flash cards, including photos and sound. The program duplicates the advantages of paper flash cards, including the ability to exclude overlearned cards, while focusing on more difficult material.

IMO this is a perfect tool for learning birds in preparation for an international trip.

The cards could focus on just difficult groups, such as hummingbirds in Ecuador; or abundant/common birds; or endemics; and so on.

Modern field guides, digital photography, bird song CDs, and this app make it just a matter of doing the work.

There is a serious issue with copyright.

Assuming copyright issues could be overcome, I'd be interested in teaming up to produce a deck of virtual flash cards for Hawaii and the tropical Pacific in the areas covered by Pratt, van Perlo, Dutson, Watling, and Doughty.

I'd also be interested in purchasing a commercial product using this or similar technology, but there doesn't seem to be anything available, nor does there appear to be a thread on the topic.

Mike

Thayer's has a flash card feature for birds of North America; however, it doesn't allow you to set aside birds you already know. I've suggested this feature to Thayer's twice, and their response is that it's too difficult to program -- the Flash Card Deluxe app indicates it's possible to create virtual flash cards with all the advantages of paper cards.

Check Sibley's Backyard Birding Flashcards for what cards might look like.

There are other examples at www.enature.com.

As far as becoming familiar with the birds of an area before a trip, it's hard to replace local guides who are on their own patch, are connected in their local birding community, and can locate birds by sound.

You may be fast at getting on a bird, but if you're completely relying on the guide for identification, check out the ABA rules on listing. If you briefly see more than a couple of dozen new birds in a day, and you aren't somewhat familiar with these birds, good luck at remembering them for any reasonable period of time.

Differentiating between Bell's Vireo, Hutton's Vireo, and Ruby-crowned Kinglet at Ixtepeji, Mexico didn't come in one trial with me.

If you cut the pace way back, and are birding by yourself at the Ethnobotanical Gardens in Oaxaca, identifying a Plumbeous Vireo using Sibley's superlative eGuide (supplemented later with Howell and van Perlo), perhaps it's not as useful to prepare.

Mike

Flashcards are an effective means for adding information to long term memory, with commercially-available sets for many areas of study -- except bird sets designed for birders.

IMO, a virtual birding flashcard would have the bird drawings/photographs on one side, together with sounds. The other side would have the name of the bird, along with range map; size in centimetres and inches; field marks; differentiating field marks from similar species; and habitat.

The software wouild automatically track your learning, using some kind of Leitner system, distributing attention to more difficult material -- while allowing periodic review of previously mastered information.

IMO there's a market for this kind of birding software -- although you would never know it from the response to this thread.

Here are a couple of websites that provide some information about the effectiveness of flashcards. There's primary research on the topic, but it's not popping up for me.

www.flashcardsecrets.com Click on learning styles, Leitner system, quick study, spaced repetition.

www.flashcarddb.com/cardset/104165-chapter8-flashcards Briefly provides some learning terms.

Mike

For anyone birding in Brazil, there are four sets of flashcards in the Quizlet library, covering 500 species, with a bird's photo on one side, and the common/scientific name on the other.

You can download these to an iPod touch (or similar) in minutes, using the Flash Card Deluxe app.

There are over 2,000 other card sets in Quizlet related to birds, probably something for just about any birder.

Mike