How to use Flashcard Machine With A Collaborator

Flashcard Machine, http://www.flashcardmachine.com/, has over 27,000 card sets dealing with Spanish language study, according to the statistics they provide on their homepage. This is more than any other topic. The card sets run from hundreds of verbs to quickly made, and just as quickly forgotten, lists of 15 cards made to study for an upcoming quiz.  It's fun to work with friends and fellow classmates on making card decks, as the work can be divided and extra eyes are good for proofreading.

You can sort by number of cards and rating, to help eliminate some of the less significant stacks.
Once you set up your account, as per instructions on their link, you can start your own card decks. First select the "New Flashcard Set" button.

Choose the title for your card deck and optionally add a description. Flashcard Machine forces you to choose a subject and educational level, as below. You choose a folder name to house your deck. Click on the Advanced Sharing Options link at the bottom. If you wish anyone else to see your cards enable Private Sharing; if you wish anyone else to edit your cards with you choose Collaborative Editing. Do not enable Flashcard Library unless you wish the world to see your efforts. You cannot assign a co-editor until you click on the Save Set Details button, but you can always come back and do it later, once you have some content in your deck.

Once you choose Save Set Details you are taken to the screen below. Once one card has been entered and saved you will not see this simplified screen again for this particular card deck. The simplified screen will offer you three choices to start creating cards. Advanced editor involves modifications made with html formatting, so you can control how the text looks, but if you mix Advanced with Quick you will often get a confusing view of your cards that shows html code surrounding your text. It is therefore best to start with, and generally stick with, the Quick Editor. Import will allow you to import words from two column spreadsheet lists, though often the lists must be pre-formatted for compatibility.  You can always choose to change details of the card deck from this screen, including moving the entire deck to a different folder in your collection and changing your sharing settings.

Below is the first view of the Quick Editor. Once you are using the deck for studying, the term will show up on one "side" of the card and the definition on the other. It is possible to do a considerable amount of writing on either side and the resulting card will scroll as needed, at least while viewed on a computer. I am not sure how cell phone viewing is affected.

If you wish to be safe, save your cards frequently. You can always go back and add details to them later.

Below is a sample set of cards for the present tense endings of the verb "vivir."  Once the cards have been saved, you can review them in random order, so it is best to be as specific as you need to be when creating each card, knowing it will not necessarily be preceded by the same card as your original entry.

Once you have hit the Save and Exit button you will be brought out to the set description again. As long as you have saved at least one card you will now have a variety of ways to interact with your new card deck, as seen on the list under Study/Print/Export. Start Study Session gives you the standard flashcard arrangement where you can flip through front to back and mark those that you have difficulty with for future study. Study Sessions can be saved or discarded.

The option to Review Cards provides the best quick glance of all of your cards, so you can look for mistakes or omissions. You cannot edit in Review, however, and will need to Return to Manage Flashcard Set and then select Quick Edit in order to make changes. Another use for Review Cards is to print to pdf so you can have a printed version to carry with you or you can study where there is no internet reception.

If you are unable to type accent marks with your computer (especially a problem for computers that don't have numeric keypads), one quick way to create text is to use the Spanish version of typeit.org, spanish.typeit.org. Though you cannot make multiple cards at a time with it, you can easily cut and paste limited text from this website to your Flashcard Machine cards, without needing to fiddle with your type size or spacing.  There is also a version for pcs that can be installed and used with many programs without needing to change your keyboard to a Spanish version.

Once you are ready to start collaboration, you should exit the editing area, return to the Manage Flashcard View and select the Sharing tab at the bottom of the screen. Click on the Manage Collaborators link:

The following screen pops up. Select Invite User:

Insert the email of your collaborator and invite; they will receive an email message and a link inviting them to join you.

If you are not an author or a collaborator in a card deck you cannot alter the contents of that deck or even use the Review screen. If you are looking at a public deck in the Flashcard Library section of Flashcard Machine that you would like access to, you  can click Add to my Sets and then it becomes your own set, to edit as you wish, for your own use.  If you just want to use it as a flash card set to study from, you can add it to your Favorites folder and can come back and use it as needed.

There is a folder called Collaborative Sets, but you won't see all of your collaborative projects here for some reason, only the projects where someone else has invited YOU to be the collaborator and you have accepted. You can verify if your co-author has accepted by going back to the Manage Flashcard Set sharing folder to see if your collaboration invitation has been accepted or is still pending.

There is more to using Flashcard Machine, like creating folders for people to see groups of card decks, moving or copying cards from one deck to another, and the games you can use to study vocabulary words, but this is enough to get you started.

[Note: this was for a Spanish class project that I am happily helping out with and is more detail that I will probably be able to muster for other such programs. :-) I am probably as interested in how one instructs as in what is being instructed.]