Memrise a great tool!

Question

I know a lot of people on this site have tried out Memrise and I've heard only good things from the people who have, personally I love using Memrise and so do my students. Have you tried it yet?

Here's a beginner's course that I'm building at the moment, some levels are powerpoint presentations and others are Memrise flashcard sets that anyone is welcome to have access to.

Memrise itself is free to use, just set up an account and away you go. Most flashcard sets on the site are free to use although Memrise has just introduced the option of offering paid courses. My course is free and I hope to keep them that way, I do offer paid Skype video lessons to go along with the lessons too if students would like some personal help too but they are totally optional and full access to the course is totally free.

Memrise really works, it was founded by Ed Cooke, a Grand Master of Memory, and Greg Detre, a Princeton neuroscientist specializing in the science of memory and forgetting - it's fun and my students confirm that they just find themselves knowing stuff after having done the flash cards a few times.

I hope that it helps you guys too!

Thank you kiwi. I'm going to check it out. - 0095ca4c, May 12, 2013

Answer 1

Thanks for sharing Kiwi. OK, you and Grace sound like good company and judgement, and your recommendations have always been awesome, plus, this is my first weekend post-semester, so I'm going to scoot over and check it out right now. Thanks again. roger

Nice to see you there Rog, how ru finding it? - Kiwi-Girl, May 13, 2013

It´s a bit odd, and needs a better connection than I often have on the road, to work fluidly, but, I made myself late to a meeting Saturday while doing ¨just one more session¨, so I must like it a least a bit ;) Thanks for the lesson. - rogspax, May 13, 2013

Answer 2

Yes indeedy Kiwi, I still go back to "memrise" every so often when my old memory

needs a touch up . I do not ever have an opportunity to speak Spanish ,

therefore "memrise" allows me to keep my old memories alive and to top up.

Good on you Ray that's the way :). Yes it's hard to keep your spanish going when you have little opportunity to speak it. Did you end up going to Mexico? - Kiwi-Girl, May 13, 2013

Answer 3

Haha, I was planning on bumping the old memrise thread to share my thoughts after using for so long and to see who else was still using is and to make it known to those who didn't know about it. So here's what I think about it (that's to say, vent some frustration; just a warning! =P)

I really appreciated all the work the creators put into their site and that they offer the platform for free. It is by far my favorite 'flashcard' program I've found since I became a 'smart.fm refugee'. That said I have some problems with how it is run some times. There was a course I had put a ton of time into creating for personal use. Without warning (though I admit I may have missed it) they decided they were going to change the database to make it more communal, which automatically messed up my set. When people started asking why parts their courses kept changing randomly, the staff's response was basically, 'oh yeah, we're doing it this way now, you can just go through and click 'don't merge' for all the words you want to stay the your particular way.' That was so frustrating that I left the site for a while. I feel like they make some important information so convoluted and difficult to find.

Then, when they upgraded the site they deleted the documents on the language conventions, the instructions on how to properly add words. If they are so big on having the group wikis a certain way, why would they get rid of the thing that tells people how to do it??? The language specific forums were also done away with so it's difficult to communicate with other users working on the same language (there's the main forum, but that's not fun to sift through).

So overall I think their system's way of delivering learning material is excellent but if it comes to something I'm going to put a lot of effort into I am very hesitant about using memrise. But it's probably my fault, I have a specific way I want to go about learning some things and I'm a rebel; I'm trying to use this site for something the owners don't want it used for. (Well they now do have the option of making your own databases but that didn't work well when I tried to use it several months ago so I don't know if it would make things better for me now.)

Anyhoo, here's my profile if anyone want to be my friend after reading all that =P http://www.memrise.com/user/broca23/

Development tweaks so hopefully it'll get better on the designing side too. - Kiwi-Girl, May 13, 2013

Thanks for commenting broca, I agree there are a few bumps that need ironing out for course creators but for students learning I think it's great so I'm prepared to suffer the little annoyances I face when designing my courses. It's still getting - Kiwi-Girl, May 13, 2013

Answer 4

I've been using Memrise for quite awhile now, and I agree that it's very useful. Now I'll have to check out your creation.

Answer 5

I LOVE memrise. It's the sole reason I learned 1.5k Spanish words so quickly and built up my vocab.

Woah now that's impressive! Well done. - Kiwi-Girl, May 13, 2013

Answer 6

I also LOVE Memrise!!! I used quizlet and other sites for so long and dreaded studing on them. But I love getting on Memrise every day!

Thanks Kiwi, for sharing this invaluable tool.

Here's a bump up so others might also know!

Thanks Jessica, btw ur like a machine on that site! - Kiwi-Girl, May 13, 2013