Real-Time Solution for Content Memorization
I will admit, when I first began using the Lessons and Practice, I was very happy and satisfied... but it all changed when I discovered the Japanese application on the Apple App Store on my iPhone... it is a dictionary, look-up and self-help Application.
When I play games or anything which has Furigana or I know the Kanji but there is a compound, I will write it into the dictionary and get a direct translation... which is awesome.
But there is yet ANOTHER awesome feature in the App, its a somewhat real-time Heisig (don't know if I spelled that correctly) Flashcard system where you can say you memorize or forgot it.
Instead of being quizzed all the time in a pop-up, I really would prefer to click "I know it!" or "Sort of Remmeber" or even "I forgot" so it seems more human and specified to your individual learning practice.
Hell, it could even be a symbolic system to have a green check for you know it or even a red circle crossed to indicate you don't know it.
I mean, if I am browsing and I see less of what I memorize and more of what I don't know... it shows me that I am not being egotistical and learning and its at my own pace too.
Imagine if you saw things you are use to, you would be bored and not be so excited because you are not learning all that much... but if you took your own time without having to go into a room with a bunch of things you have learned and don't know, it becomes confusing and you may leave that room and not come back.
Anyone think this is a good idea?
Example:
忘れない - I know it! (Green letters)
お仕事 - I kind of know this... (Orange letters)
自分 - I forgot this... (Red letters)
新しい - I have not seen this yet. (White letters)
This is just a rough example, but it illustrates my idea.
Feel free to modify, change or even a newer/better concept would be great!
If you have more of a personal learning curve and are presented with your brain's information than your own personal feelings or emotion, you are free from personal conflict and just what you need to remember or what you may have forgotten.
I think this is a brilliant idea.
Anyone else?
When I play games or anything which has Furigana or I know the Kanji but there is a compound, I will write it into the dictionary and get a direct translation... which is awesome.
But there is yet ANOTHER awesome feature in the App, its a somewhat real-time Heisig (don't know if I spelled that correctly) Flashcard system where you can say you memorize or forgot it.
Instead of being quizzed all the time in a pop-up, I really would prefer to click "I know it!" or "Sort of Remmeber" or even "I forgot" so it seems more human and specified to your individual learning practice.
Hell, it could even be a symbolic system to have a green check for you know it or even a red circle crossed to indicate you don't know it.
I mean, if I am browsing and I see less of what I memorize and more of what I don't know... it shows me that I am not being egotistical and learning and its at my own pace too.
Imagine if you saw things you are use to, you would be bored and not be so excited because you are not learning all that much... but if you took your own time without having to go into a room with a bunch of things you have learned and don't know, it becomes confusing and you may leave that room and not come back.
Anyone think this is a good idea?
Example:
忘れない - I know it! (Green letters)
お仕事 - I kind of know this... (Orange letters)
自分 - I forgot this... (Red letters)
新しい - I have not seen this yet. (White letters)
This is just a rough example, but it illustrates my idea.
Feel free to modify, change or even a newer/better concept would be great!
If you have more of a personal learning curve and are presented with your brain's information than your own personal feelings or emotion, you are free from personal conflict and just what you need to remember or what you may have forgotten.
I think this is a brilliant idea.
Anyone else?
posted by JanetMerai
Comments 13
Thank you for explaining this in detail. I can understand what you mean.
I agree with you that choosing I know, forgot, etc is more human way of learning (asking and answering question)
But the problem if this feature is implemented in JCJP, the point EXP, ranking system will not function properly.
How can the system give points by the user giving answer that he/she know the word.
For personalization, it is good, because it is less likely to lying to yourself that you know the word.
However, for social learning, people can just tell everybody that he/she know every words in the database, and earn high scores, and have all vocabularies in his/her good list.
Yes, this is a really brilliant idea. I sometimes think that it is kind of annoying to answer the word that I already know and I have to put an effort finding the answer in the 4 options.
But, from the problem that I have explained, What do you think is the good implementation on this feature?
Thank You,
bn
I like the idea, and I don't understand why the EXP system should be affected.
You have a list ordered by a global criterion (preferably a useful one, like, for example, frequency of use), and that order gives every item a predetermined EXP prize. Like the current system, for that matter.
Imagine an user that chooses a correct answer and selects 'that's a piece of cake'. That gives him/her the predetermined EXP prize for that question, regardless of his/her level, or his/her subjective opinion about the difficulty of the question.
But that opinion affects his/her odds of seeing that question again (maybe in 2 months, for instance, or maybe you can send that question to a special list that could only be opened when the user wants to voluntarily review that subjectively 'easy' words).
This way, the user can customize more his/her experience while practicing, and he/she can still be ranked against other users.
Of course, if the user thinks he/she knows some answer but fails, you should ignore the opinion, and repeat the question at any moment. (And give the user some very negative EXP!)
If the user wants to lie in order to avoid some hard questions in the future, it's up to him/her (the question should be correctly answered anyway), and his/her practice would be more and more boring, just like now, when you select only lower levels in practice.
Beeant, would you perhaps agree the EXP thing is nonsensical?
If it were me, I would rather have a better way of showing how well I know it.
The current system is structured to have a ranking, set of EXP but it stops there... but that seems more egotistical and proves nothing.
For example, saying that I know level 10 of Japanese is like saying I leveled up to 50 in World of Warcraft, only THEY know about it but anyone else would be confused.
I think the EXP and ranking system is flawed in that way, but I do agree that in a close-grouped community may only be able to recognize it, but what if this could actually become its own resume?
There is so much potential but its your site Beeant, so feel free to make your own decisions :3
In all honesty, I find this a great place to keep track of your learning progress and no other site keeps itself as well maintained like this one.
I also think that EXP is not the goal... The idea it is awesome and if you consider to do so it will be a big and good change.- I think a good suggestion is instead of EXP, which to be honest is a funny idea, (but it has some dreadful flaws and while it is sort of fun... where is the fun at all?) is to instead make it all a collaborative effort.
I don't think I am going to compete with average Joe who has more points than me, its personal so why try to compete?
Doesn't that contradict the very idea of learning and communication?
One thing I think that could improve is instead of tabbing everything you could make it so that everyone is on the same page instead of separating it all.
I think a goal of EXP is just as contradictory as having a flow of achieving the best score makes you not want to further learn the material.
Like you said Beeant, if you know all the words it would be boring... so you clearly demonstrated my suggestion and makes it flawless.
Let's say that there was a JLPT, global list or some master-list and it is organized by categories hidden by the user, so if they want to know certain lists or standard Japanese Language systems we can do so by selecting that list.
With this list, let's say that we encounter context and instead of a pop-up we can click if we know that word... okay we know it now.
Now let's say after clicking that we know certain words that after a certain period of time they come back to us and we are presented with the same ones we know.
Okay so we know it again, it comes to us less often and are presented with words/context we are not sure of which puts all the memorized words into a pile that we know by heart.
More and more you don't want to see the same words you already know but they randomly show up now and then like an ad... and who doesn't forget an ad?
Short term memory can turn into long-term memory if you understand human memory, so why not put it to use?
But let's say that you visit OTHER sites, now if you encounter unfamiliar words... wouldn't it be nice to click those too?
I'm sure you could write a plugin or something to activate you know that word so it becomes global too, plus if people want to see their progress they can jump back to the site and even study the words they want to know by coming back so your site still receives hits and views plus returning users.
Example:
I go to asahi.co.jp and I view their Japanese language and not English.
When I view the Kanji, words or anything else there could be a symbol, icon or words displaying I KNOW or DONT know a particular word, and if I translate it on my own I can say I DO know it.
That makes it easier to read other sites too while still keeping interest in this site too.
Anyone think this is an awesome idea?
Contribute your ideas and suggestions too :3 - I will do the reply ASAP.
Right now, I'm working on data visualization to illustrate the vocabularies status in our minds.
I hope you will like this feature.
Please wait for a while - you can take a look at my progress of the visualization here http://japaneseclass.jp/user/brain/1
the last number is my id number
you can try with your id number too.
It is not released yet, because it is still in progress.
what I'm trying to make is to visualize:
the more you answer correctly one one specific vocabulary, it will show bigger bubble.
What do you about this so far?
any suggestion?
Thank you 
My id brain visualisation reminds me kind of koi pond in the japanese water garden. I wanna mouse-interacting, hunt or feed them. Small ones are too shy, they are hidding themselves behind. Crazy, playful, screensaver-like feeling.- Janet suggestion sounds awesome, yet difficult to do.
About the data visualization:
When the numbers are big, the display is horrible. Look at mine: http://japaneseclass.jp/user/brain/3638
So far, I can't see anything useful. No, wait, I can't see anything at all. The texts overlap, the bubbles hide most of text...
In Chrome, is not that bad, but in Firebox is horrible.
Anyway, it seems useless. I'm not interested in my best known words.
Maybe I don't see the point. What's the point?
- Beeant, this is a very good idea you have and I actually enjoy it.
However, after around two minutes I became bored of it because it is just meant for "fun" and not "learning" to be honest.
Let's say you wanted to make the bubbles bigger/smaller if someone doesn't know them well enough, and they become bigger/smaller depending on how well you know them.
Like the Lessons, Examples and so on, heck you could even have people click on a small icon somewhere on the bubble, like the dakuten/handakuten (the claw-marks on the top right and circles) so it is a memorization and relates to the actual Japanese language itself :3
Or you could use this to display, visually, the words you know and on another side words you don't know and the display is affected by how you respond to each word.
On my end, I was not very satisfied with it, but I see its potential elsewhere.
If instead you made it more flexible, let's say you could even move the bubbles around but not even that would be helpful.
Organizing words are great, but this is the opposite, seems sort of randomly thought of, perhaps you should spend more time thinking about the goal of this idea than making a concept?
I think having a mascot somewhere on the page holding a sign, prop or something and having the kana/kanji showing that you know/don't know a certain word would be helpful, people love images right?
There is a lack of games, its mostly school tests and quizzes, that is why people seem to leave after getting to a certain level after posting images and such.
What about story-telling, mythological Japanese history, Japanese fundamentals, Culture, History and so on?
It seems like the entire point of learning Japanese is missing... and to be honest if I was creating a site dedicated to helping Japanese people understand English, I would take into consideration making the site Japanese friendly, like a mascot to help them understand the culture than blatantly filtering it into Japanese.
Ever wonder how localized Anime loses its touch and people complain and buy the Japanese English subtitled version instead?
That's a great example of Culture differences and censorship.
Noone seems to like it, even me :3
Some people seem to like it, but that's because they are not willing to understand Japanese but rather learn Kanji and vocab without even living in the Culture.
I don't know, I just think this site is too immature to really advance any further than it really is. - Actually the main reason why I make this visualization is to see user's vocabulary learning balance.
Some user have really imbalanced vocabulary encounter, like they keep on doing one question.
(Look at mikotsu's vocabulary status). I want to give the user hesitation to keep on staying in one position and stuck in one level.
So with this visualization, I was hoping to create a mind set in the user's mind that the more he/she give correct answer to one specific vocabulary, the bigger the vocabulary will be, which the visualization will appear to be ugly because one vocabulary will appear to be so big.
Mm.. I think most of the ideas are pretty good and I totally agree there should be some more different types of games / ways to learn, not just Kanji & Vocabulary.
Maybe add a few sentences long text and then make the user answer to few questions regarding to the text, to know if she/he understood it.
And for more depth in kanji learning system with stroke order and so.. Might be too much work to do though.. ><- About that kanji stroke order, Spanz suggest me that feature last year actually.
and honestly, I haven't even start working on it. I'm sorry spanz.
What spanz suggest me is to answer kanji question by writting the kanji.
It is really good, but I'm thinking to implement that feature on iPhone app, as it is not so convenient to write with mouse. So I hesitated to start working that for web version.
Anyway, there are so many cool stuffs in the JCJP to do list, but I have not got the time to do them, and JCJP needs a good server for those systems to run, or it is going to work slow.
