Flashcards on the Phone

Old-fashioned flashcards written on index cards have some disadvantages. You have to remember to keep the cards with you so that you can use them whenever you have some free time. And making copies to share is awkward. So, I finally found a JAVA flashcard application for Spanish vocabulary for my phone.  It’s called StudyME, and I found it on Studystack (a free site dedicated to flashcardness for a bunch of different subjects.  They have a lot more than Spanish language flashcards, and a bunch of different ways to use them, like games and quizzes).

To install the main program, copy studyme.jar to your MIDlets folder on your phone (using Activesync->Explore->My MIDlets). Download the flashcards (a filename ending in .jad) you want to study from http://www.studystack.com/Spanish.  Select one from the list, go to the webpage containing it, click the icon "Apps" and go to that page.  Click the StudyMe link which takes you down that same page to the StudyME description.  In that section there is a button labeled "Get.JAD file" which will download that stack.

It will always be labeled "StudyME.jad", so save it with a name that describes the content, like "House words.jad", then put it in the same directory as studyme.jar.  Open the .jad file in Notepad and change the line "MIDlet-Jar-URL: http://www.studystack.com/java-studysta/StudyME.jar" to read "MIDlet-Jar-URL: StudyME.jar".  It should stop looking for a webpage when you do this, and use the copy in the MIDlets directory instead.

Things to know before you go further:

When you start the app for the first time, it will try to connect to the studystack webpage with the internet connection you have.  Since we don’t pay for an internet connection this is not recommended.  You will have one opportunity to tell it not to do this, so do it when it asks. You will have to tell it that you like this setting (referred to as "Keep the Application data and security settings?"" or something) next time the app is started.

Using the app itself is real straightforward.  Follow the directions and you should be just fine.