Tablet PC Flash Card Program Now Available for Pilot

An exciting opportunity is available to schools or groups that have tablet PC's with Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (not Vista).



Dr. Ananda Gunawardena of Carnegie Mellon University is looking for groups that would like to use CMU's Tablet PC Flash Cards as a collaborative learning tool in an educational setting. The program has been featured in our posts of April 10, 2009 and March 8, 2009.



If you have ideas about how you would like to use Tablet PC Flash Cards and share them using Google Groups, please email Dr. Gunawardena: guna@cs.cmu.edu with your brief proposal so you can obtain the program software and more information. You do not have to be a teacher, but you do have to have an idea that allows the sharing of flash card decks. Perhaps you are one of a group of home schooling parents, or you have an idea for an after school program. All you need is access to Tablet PC's with the XP operating system and access to the internet.



A research project at CMU concluded, among other things, that by merging the cards and sharing them, the users can benefit from both individual and collaborative learning. The program features an algorithm that tracks scores and intelligently asks the users the cards that they need to review. The cards can also be reviewed sequentially, if desired, since learning materials are frequently built upon previously learned materials.



As we have mentioned in the previous blog entries, the Tablet PC Flash card program offers advantages over other online flash card applications in that it allows users to save and edit their "deck" collection on their own computer which facilitates moving it, sharing it and emailing it to other users. Multiple decks can be created without losing the original deck. Cards can be created by drawing or writing them using the tablet's pen, or they can be imported as JPEG files made in other applications. Decks are easily shared by setting up a members only Google Groups site.