Why a flashcard app when Anki is perfectly good?
Anki is an amazing spaced-repetition flashcard app. If you’re a learner creating your own cards one at a time, not much beats it.
Managing a deck for other people though is difficult with Anki..
When we want to add new cards to a deck, update an old card, or change the order of cards, Anki makes our life difficult. We upload a new file to the website and ask our students to download it. Then each student must go through a somewhat complicated update process. And that update process rarely works out exactly how we want it to.
Furthermore, Anki is extremely customizable. That sounds great! But small changes students make to their Anki can mean that our decks often don’t work the way they are supposed to. There are also “fake” versions of Anki floating around that often lead to trouble for our students.
Currently, if a student wants to see more about a sentence in one of our decks they have to go to a separate site! If they notice an error? Again, they have to leave Anki and go to a separate site. Then they wait weeks or months for an update. They download the update, and try to update their deck within Anki. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
Furthermore, some students struggle getting Anki to work so much, that they never get a chance to try our flashcard decks.
In comes Hirameki.
- We can issue updates immediately! Every single student’s cards will immediately reflect the change!
- Students can click on any word or grammar in a sentence and see what it means, immediately.
- Students can report issues with cards directly from the card.
- We can add tons of new features and learning content DIRECTLY INTO HIRAMEKI using the data from the decks we’ve created, in the future.
What the future holds
Immersion Content:
Over the coming year we plan to migrate all our immersion content to Hirameki. For stories that we migrate, you will be able to click on any word or grammar within a story and get an explanation! You’ll also be able to see exactly what percentage of the words and grammar in that story you have already learned. BEFORE you read the story.
Other Learning Content:
We plan to add new stories, exercises, and possibly even interactive content (Andy's Dream Project™︎). All this content will utilize the features we’ve already built into Hirameki.
Dictionary:
We'll be adding a “Dictionary” feature that allows you to search through all our words and grammar. (This is already available in the Hirameki Jiten section!)
Gamification:
We plan to add encouraging gamification features, and opt-in leaderboards.
Vacation Mode:
We’re planning to implement a unique “vacation mode”. It will allow you to take time off, and not feel overwhelmed when you return. Ours will be different from any vacation mode available on other flashcard platforms.
We can't finish these features tomorrow. But over the coming 1 to 2 years Hirameki will be one of our main focuses here at ToKini Andy. There will be new decks, new features, and new fun.
Our main goal with Hirameki is to make it one of the most useful learning platforms you have ever used. This is the first step. We are excited for the future, and hope that you are, too!
|
