Babel Flashcards - the PhD student's new friend
A PhD student named Drayton Benner contacted me recently about his new flashcard software application for Mac and PC. I was happy to check it out, and am happy to let others know what I think of the program, Babel Flashcards.
As with any application, there are pros and cons. Let me get the cons out of the way.
1. Unless I simply overlooked it, there is no way for you to create your own cards, nor edit existing cards. You are limited to the decks made specifically for this application.
2. PC users don't care about interface too much, but Mac users do. It isn't very Mac-like.
3. In the age of multimedia, it's nice to be able to add audio to the cards if a user wants. No such ability here.
4. No mobile app. I do the majority of my flashcard studying on my iPhone nowadays.
Now the pros. I can see this program being just great for PhD students living and breathing the biblical languages. Each card has important metadata attached to them— frequency, part of speech, and location. Users can create derivative decks using this metadata. So, create yourself a deck of all verbs and nouns in the book of James that occur 30 times or less. Or make a deck to quiz yourself on all adjectives in Hosea. The sky's the limit. This is pretty powerful stuff. The only other Flashcard program like it is Ken Penner's Flash! Pro. The difference between Babel and Flash! Pro is compatibility with both Mac and PC. Also, with Babel you can just choose the Greek deck for a lower cost, whereas Flash! Pro includes everything automatically.
I hope some students out there find Babel Flashcards useful. It is a well written app. I've also added it to my flashcard roundup page.
As with any application, there are pros and cons. Let me get the cons out of the way.
1. Unless I simply overlooked it, there is no way for you to create your own cards, nor edit existing cards. You are limited to the decks made specifically for this application.
2. PC users don't care about interface too much, but Mac users do. It isn't very Mac-like.
3. In the age of multimedia, it's nice to be able to add audio to the cards if a user wants. No such ability here.
4. No mobile app. I do the majority of my flashcard studying on my iPhone nowadays.
Now the pros. I can see this program being just great for PhD students living and breathing the biblical languages. Each card has important metadata attached to them— frequency, part of speech, and location. Users can create derivative decks using this metadata. So, create yourself a deck of all verbs and nouns in the book of James that occur 30 times or less. Or make a deck to quiz yourself on all adjectives in Hosea. The sky's the limit. This is pretty powerful stuff. The only other Flashcard program like it is Ken Penner's Flash! Pro. The difference between Babel and Flash! Pro is compatibility with both Mac and PC. Also, with Babel you can just choose the Greek deck for a lower cost, whereas Flash! Pro includes everything automatically.
I hope some students out there find Babel Flashcards useful. It is a well written app. I've also added it to my flashcard roundup page.
Labels: Aramaic, flashcards, Greek, Hebrew
posted by Danny Zacharias at
8:03 AM
1 Comments
