Finding the right tools and techniques for learning is difficult. We've all spent time at some point searching the internet for the answer to questions like 'How can we revise effectively', 'Best methods for studying', 'How to ace my exams' - but often we end up reverting back to what we know and the techniques that we've always used or simply get bored with searching and so revert back to procrastinating on Instagram.
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By purchasing the app, you help to support Anki's future development. If you can't afford the app, you can still use AnkiWeb. Android Devices. AnkiDroid is written by a separate group of people. As it was based off the free desktop code I make available, the AnkiDroid developers decided to make the Android version free as well. Overview: A powerful flashcard app that uses spaced repetition to make your studies more efficient and effective. Even after testing many other flashcard apps, Anki remains my top recommendation. While some of the other apps on this list have slicker interfaces and more features, Anki remains superior for helping you learn, retain,.
This class provides an extensive walkthrough of the flashcard app Anki – a tool which has made studying more effective, more efficient and less stressful for thousands of students around the world. The aim of the class is to show that Anki is an immensely powerful tool and by using it, you can start to leverage the benefits of active recall and spaced repetition to improve your own work – whether that be studying for exams or learning new content of any sort. Whether you are a beginner to Anki or you've had experience using the app in the past, I hope you can draw some helpful tips, advice and value from these lessons.
Section One
In the first section, we’ll introduce the theory and power of flashcards before guiding you through the basics of Anki – from initial installation to an explanation of the different card types as well as how you can use the app across multiple devices to make sure you keep up with your flashcard reviews. Even if you’ve used Anki in the past, you’ll hopefully still find value in these videos because it’s important to get a solid foundational understanding of the mechanics of Anki before moving further into the app.
Section Two
The second chapter is walkthrough-based and features a series of examples where I’ll share how I would make a flashcard from a lecture, a video as well as how I made flashcards for an essay-based exam during my third year at Medical School. The section finishes with a discussion about the importance of using the Extra section of your flashcards to enhance your understanding and improve your flashcards.
Section Three
Section three is structured around frequently asked questions that I’ve received in relation to Anki – not only in terms of the mechanics of the app but also questions around how to maintain motivation, discipline and consistency to avoid becoming overwhelmed with cards to review. There are also a series of videos where I’ll discuss Anki in relation to other apps that people sometimes use for similar learning techniques – including Quizlet, Notion and Google Sheets.
Section Four
The final chapter is more advanced and aimed at the optimisation of Anki through the use of tags, premade decks and a handful of recommended add-ons that will enhance your experience, efficacy and efficiency when using Anki.
Throughout this class, there’ll be segments from interviews that I recorded with students from around the world and I’d like to thank David, Prerak, Clara, Sanjush, Carter, Kaddor and Liam for offering their time to talk through their own experiences with Anki and how they’ve used it for their own studies.
Why Should You Start?
I discovered Anki in my second year at university whilst studying medicine at Cambridge and the app not only had a measurable positive impact on my studies but also helped revolutionise the way that I studied as well.
For me, Anki has probably been the most useful and valuable app that I've used over the past few years and I want others to be able to get the same benefits that I achieved by discovering it. I often get questions on my videos asking for advice on using Anki as it can be quite a daunting app for beginners, that's why I've decided to put together an extensive Skillshare class which takes you right through from setting yourself up on the app to the more advanced ways that you can optimise it to suit your own needs and get the most from your work.
Make sure you check out the below for more tips on how to study effectively.
Contents- 1. Language Support Add-ons
- 2. Frozen Fields
- 3. AwesomeTTS (text-to-speech playback / recording)
- 4. Button Colours (Good, Again)
- 5. Memrise Course Importer
- 6. Download from Quizlet image import supported
- 7. Expand and Collapse Decks
- 8. Search Google Images for selected words
- 9. Load Balancer
- 10. Toggle Full Screen
- 11. Power Format Pack: Markdown, code blocks, lists, tables, syntax highlight & more
- 12. Image Occlusion Enhanced
- 13. Ignore accents in browser search
- 14. AnkiStrategy
- 15. More Overview Stats
- 16. More Overview Stats 2
- 17. Force Custom Font
- 18. Night Mode
- 19. Image Resizer
- 20. Reset card(s) scheduling information / progress
- 21. “Must Have” an Anki Add-on Library
Anki supports community created add-ons which allow you to expand Anki and make it do more for you. You can download these from the following webpage, https://ankiweb.net/shared/addons/.
I have made use of Anki for over 3 years now.
There have been some brilliant plugins that I have used which I feel can make your SRSing a lot easier. So without further ado, here is my list of what I think are the best Anki plugins.
This list is in no particular order.
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Disclaimer – As time goes on, support for these plugins may be lost and thus some of these may no longer work.
If you want more information on learning things more efficiently AND making them stick then I suggest taking a look at Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.
Top 20 Anki Add-ons
1. Language Support Add-ons
A few languages have plugins to allow for extra functionality. I personally have only used the Japanese one (which is amazing by the way), but if you are studying any of the other available languages then it might be worth taking a look at them. It’s just a shame that there aren’t more language support plugins.
- Japanese
- Chinese
- Esperanto
- German
- AZERTY / French keys support
2. Frozen Fields
This plugin adds a little snowflake icon next to each of the fields when you add or edit a note. If you click the snowflake then it will “freeze” the content in that field, thus carrying it onto the next card you add. This is less useful for language learning but can be great for other forms of study.
3. AwesomeTTS (text-to-speech playback / recording)
This has been pretty helpful since I have started learning German. With the lack of subtitles for German shows, I have been unable to use Subs2SRS. This little add-on acts as a good replacement for audio flashcards.
To get it working just highlight the text and click the speaker symbol. This will then bring up a new window, click record and it will replace the highlighted text to audio.
Depending on the language you may wish to change what speech source you use. I tend to just use Google’s speech source as it is pretty accurate for English so I’m guessing it’s going to be okay for other languages. It supports a range of languages and If you like audio on your sentence flashcards then it’s a must have.
Note: Nothing replaces a real humans’ voice though, so if you can, try to get material which has text and audio, that matches up, and make use of the following guide to convert your material into flashcards: Get Thousands of Contextual Sentences for Language Learning (Sentence Banks)
4. Button Colours (Good, Again)
This is a very simple add-on that adds colour to the buttons at the bottom of the screen, just like they are in the mobile versions.
5. Memrise Course Importer
Memrise is incredibly popular and I used it to learn hiragana and katakana in Japanese (along with Dr Moku).
I know that it has a wide range of courses, professional and community based, as well as the ability to make your own flashcards.
Now, a lot of people seem to discover Anki after Memrise and realise it is more efficient.
When you hear this you naturally want to switch, but you don’t want to throw away everything you’ve done.
Well this plugin doesn’t transfer your progress but it can import entire courses into Anki. This means that you will lose your progress, however you can still easily import the content from Memrise and then use Anki to study it more efficiently.
6. Download from Quizlet image import supported
This is the same as Memrise but will import decks from Quizlet. If you are a fan of Quizlet then this could be great if you are thinking of moving to Anki. It can also be super beneficial if you are using other people’s working from Quizlet.
7. Expand and Collapse Decks
Does exactly what it says in the title. All your decks can be put into one deck or opened up into separate decks with a click of a button and without the worry of cards being mixed into the wrong decks.
A really nice feature if you want to study all your decks at once, or if you want to do them individually.
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8. Search Google Images for selected words
I use this sooo much. It’s incredibly useful! This pretty much does what it says on the tin. All you have to do is highlight a word, right-click and you can search it straight into google images.
Combine this with a fast screenshot program such as Gyazo and you can add images to flashcards super efficiently.
9. Load Balancer
This plugin makes Anki’s reschedule algorithms a bit more manageable. Very useful, especially in the beginning stage as some days you get loads of cards and others you get barely any.
This spreads the load, making it less intensive on certain days. The only issue is this can make Anki slightly less efficient as it does mess with its scheduling algorithms and thus Spaced Repetition.
I recommend uninstalling this after you get used to SRSing.
10. Toggle Full Screen
Press F11 and go full screen. This is great if you want to get rid of any distractions while studying. Press F11 and go full screen.
Simple, yet effective.
11. Power Format Pack: Markdown, code blocks, lists, tables, syntax highlight & more
If there is one thing Anki isn’t particularly good at its formatting. Well thanks to this add-on, we can now use code to change our card layouts.
It comes with certain pre-installed features such as tables, colour formatting, user defined key binds and much more. This adds a lot more functionality to Anki and can be a very useful plugin.
12. Image Occlusion Enhanced
Like cloze deletion?
Ever wanted to remove parts of images to create image based cloze deletion cards but find Microsoft Paint too much of a pain?
Then this add-on is for you.
Easily remove parts of images in Anki to make cloze deletion cards.
Very useful!
13. Ignore accents in browser search
This plugin ignores the special types of accent letters that are used in other languages, while searching in Anki‘s browser.
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For example the flicked “é” in French would be recognised as just “e” in the browser search results.
This is a must have for those who are studying languages that have these special characters in them, as Anki doesn’t support them.
This works for a variety of languages so check to see if it is relevant with the language you are learning.
14. AnkiStrategy
Can’t get into Anki? Really struggle with doing your reviews everyday? Why not turn it into a game with AnkiStrategy? This plugin formed from AnkiEmperor and AnkiWarrior, two simple games where you had to conquer a country but the author of this plugin thought that they games where too simple, suggesting that they where merely two fancy progress bars.
So, they produced a more complex game with competition and strategy taking on a bigger role.
The main difference here is that instead of a simple number running from 0% to 100%, your progress is determined by cities, inhabitants and monuments.
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You then have to compete with computer-controlled players to conquer cities, use strategical decisions on how to spend the energy you get from your work.
The most effective part though is the motivational part. If you don’t do your reviews then you will go backward and start losing.
It’s slightly more complex than just “work hard and win”.
The rules are relatively simple and it can be really fun if you get into it.
Games are addictive and if you know you are easily susceptible to gaming then definitely take advantage of yourself.
15. More Overview Stats
Adds some basic overall stats when you click on a deck in the main menu. It tells you how many cards are due today, how many reviews you have, how many new cards are available to learn and how many cards you have total.
Quite a nice little add-on, especially if you like seeing your stats grow as you progress. For me this is a must have, along with More Overview Stats 2.
16. More Overview Stats 2
Essentially the same as the plugin before but with even More Overview Stats! It adds more stats to the overview page and tells you how many mature and learning cards you have, as well as suspended cards.
I have used this for over a year now and it is very useful. It saves you having to look through all the graphs to find details about your deck as it’s all there in one easy to comprehend format.
17. Force Custom Font
If you are studying an Asian language then the chances of you struggling to read small font sizes are going to be high.
This plugin helps by allowing you to change the font for the menus in Anki. Not only does Anki use a stupid font when you change the display to Japanese but the text is also incredibly small. This add-on allows you to change this to any font you like.
If you look in the comments of the add-on page, someone also explains how to change the font size as well, which is also incredibly useful if you struggle to read small text. This is a plugin I still use today as the default Japanese font really annoys me.
18. Night Mode
Night mode for the PC version. If you don’t know what night mode is, it basically just helps reduce eye strain by using darker colours for Anki‘s background and in other areas.
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This is great for anybody working in a low lit area or who likes studying at night as it will prevent that annoying screen glare that comes with applications that use bright white colours as their background.
19. Image Resizer
Another simple but effective plugin. This will save you a tonne of time.
You don’t want too much information on your cards anyway, so having massive images in them is not good.
This plugin solves that by allowing you to easily resize images within Anki.
20. Reset card(s) scheduling information / progress
This shouldn’t be used that often.
Very useful if you are importing someone else’s deck that still has scheduling information in it or if you want to start a fresh, although this defeats the point of Spaced Repetition.
Personally, I don’t ever recommend resetting your own stats.
If you have a lot of backlog, just plod through it one at a time. Resetting your stats is essentially the same thing anyway, so you might as well try to remember what you can from your reviews instead of starting from word-go.
21. “Must Have” an Anki Add-on Library
This isn’t really an add-on in itself, more of a library of the top used add-ons.
If you want to save time then you can try downloading this.
Do be careful though, I have never tried it and I feel like downloading 50 add-ons at a time could be a bit overwhelming, not to mention very taxing on Anki.
Could be useful though ?
I hope you found this list helpful. Some of these plugins are way more useful than others but I have found that most of them have enhanced my SRS experience.
I definitely suggest taking a look at the plugins page. There may be some little gems there that could make the process a lot smoother for you.
As always, thanks for reading!
マット
2017/02/14
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By Matthew Hawkins
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