Flashcard Maker

Aim for 20 to 50 cards per deck and one fact per card. Anything bigger and you'll spend the session shuffling rather than learning; anything multi-fact and the brain anchors the recall to the wrong cue. The maker holds your front (question) and back (answer) pairs, lets you shuffle for randomised review, and tracks which cards you've marked as Known so the deck shrinks as you go.

Worked example: revising 30 GCSE biology terms. Don't write 'photosynthesis' on the front and a 60-word definition on the back. Write 'What gas do plants release in photosynthesis?' on the front and 'Oxygen' on the back, then a separate card for 'What gas do plants absorb?' with 'Carbon dioxide'. Two atomic cards beat one fat one because each one tests recall in a single direction, which is how flashcards earn their reputation.

Studying flashcards in the order you wrote them is barely better than re-reading notes. Your brain remembers position, not content, and you start anticipating the next card. Hit Shuffle before every session so each card surfaces cold. The maker re-randomises with one click and the order resets every time you toggle it.

Pair the shuffle with the Known button. When you flip a card and the answer comes back inside two seconds with no hesitation, mark it Known. The next pass focuses on the smaller pile of weak cards. Tomorrow, reset Known and run the whole deck again, fresh; the cards that were strong yesterday will mostly stay strong, and the truly fragile ones will resurface. Two short sessions of 10 minutes a day beats one 40-minute slog every Sunday.

Front: one question, ideally answerable in a single word or short phrase. Back: that one answer, plus a tiny mnemonic or hint if it helps. No paragraphs, no bullet lists, no 'and also'. If you can't fit the answer on a Post-it, split it into two cards.

For language learners, that means front = English word, back = target-language word with gender or article. For maths, front = formula name, back = formula. For history, front = 'Year of the Battle of Hastings?', back = '1066'. For medical students, front = drug name, back = mechanism in three or four words. Keep the [spelling test generator](/spelling-test-generator) and the [times tables practice](/times-tables-practice) in mind for things flashcards aren't great at, like spelling drills and pure number recall, where typed input beats flipping.

Proper spaced-repetition apps (Anki, Quizlet) schedule each card based on how confident you were last time. This maker is simpler and faster to set up: it gives you the deck, the shuffle and the Known toggle. That's enough for most school and university revision if you put the spacing in yourself.

The home-grown system: review the deck the day you build it, again 24 hours later, again 3 days later, again 1 week later, again 2 weeks later. Five sessions across a fortnight will move 80% of the deck into long-term memory. After that, a single review the morning of the exam is usually all you need. Skip a day and the timing slips, but the order matters more than the exact intervals; just keep coming back.