I admit it: I’ve been seeing another flashcard program. It’s a free, open-source program called Anki (slogan: “friendly, intelligent flashcards”) that is both really easy to use and jam-packed with features. It’s also based on some pretty impressive educational research—for instance, it automatically schedules flashcards to be reviewed at the optimum time for your brain, and there are several answer buttons so you can tell the program how hard it was for you to get each card right. All of this coupled with its impressive online syncing and sharing features, plus apps for both Android and iPad, and I’m wondering where Anki has been all my life.
Try it out with Akkadian, you won’t be sorry! Just download the right version for your platform at http://ankisrs.net/ and install it as you would any other program. Then go to File > Download > Shared Deck, and type “Akkadian” in the search prompt. The two decks that I have shared are called “Akkadian Cuneiform – Huehnergard GA 2nd Ed” and “Akkadian Vocabulary – Huehnergard GA 2nd Ed”. These decks are made from the same spreadsheets I’ve been compiling all along, and they are current up through Lesson 21 (more to follow, of course). Download them, and you’ll be ready for a trial run. There is extensive online documentation, including quick start videos on YouTube to get you off and running in no time flat.
Let me know what you think. If anyone is interested, we could even do a little basic Anki how-to session together. I know a couple of other TEDS students who are already using Anki, and we could invite them and swap tips and ideas. For my part, I am hoping this will help me get a better handle on the cuneiform signs, which are starting to accumulate in a most disheartening way—flitting around my head like so many angry black moths! Hopefully this will be another way to make everyone’s life a little easier this semester.
TEDS Akkadian 