Need practice learning briefs or phrases? Use digital flash cards!

[Keith Rowan II]

Many of us have used flash cards to practice or learn material. You may even have done it in your theory or bridge class. I recently discovered the most helpful tool in learning briefs – sites where you can make your own digital flash cards!

Basically, you make cards with the English word or phrase on the front, and steno on the back (or any other way you want – more on making them later, it’s easy!) Then you start a session and try to write each card as it pops up! Apparently there are a few, but the one I have tried, which is amazing and has all the features (as well as a very responsive tech team who added a “Court Reporting” category when I requested it!) is

http://www.flashcardmachine.com/

What is so much better about this site than good old-fashioned flash cards or just writing lists of briefs, you ask?

1) You can share your cards with everyone and look at other cards people have made. We can all pool our collective resources. Oh, and it's free (and easy).

2) They have a plethora of options. The most helpful are the “random” and “auto-flip” options that are perfect for CR briefs practice. With random, you don’t know what word or phrase will pop at you next, and you have to react and write it. With auto-flip, you do nothing once it starts – you just keep your hands on your machine and write! You can even choose how fast the cards flip! If you are just starting, you might put it to four or five second intervals. Then as you get better at a group of cards, three then two, maybe even one second! It is good to write the word or phrase as many times as you possibly can before the next one comes up – more muscle memory.

3) You can leave the flash cards window over your realtime and you can see your realtime and the flash cards at the same time.

4) It is very, very easy to create the cards. You can either do it from scratch, which isn’t bad for small lists, or you can simply upload a text file as long as it is tabbed. I will explain this at bottom.

5) The flashcards are always available as long as you have internet. No carrying cards around or wasted effort. You get to keep your hands on your machine and write!

One more thing before I explain how to upload your files. I have been using this site for only a few days, but I have over 50 sets of cards uploaded (it’s that easy). Most sets have between 20-40 cards. Here is a link to my page. Feel free to study them to see what in the heck I am talking about and if you like the program. If you like any of my cards, feel free to study them and use the briefs! Otherwise, create your own and you have the perfect study aid to learn new strokes! Here’s the link –

http://www.flashcardmachine.com/p/2ox51u

Now, to upload. If you have any lists in Excel, as I do, it’s very easy. I have lists of briefs in Excel that have the English in the first column, and the steno in the second column. You have to highlight these and copy to a text file (notepad) to be able to upload to the site. Simply copy and paste into a text file. When you do this, the steno part will be tabbed over from the English because Excel has tabs already. Your text file you upload has to have tabs so that the site will know where the front of the card ends, and where the back of the card begins.

If you don’t have Excel, but you have a wordlist in Word or somewhere else, simply paste the English word into a text file, then hit the TAB key, then paste the steno. That’s how you manually create tabs – you just hit the TAB key. If you don’t want to upload lists or don’t have any, just use the editor on the site. You’ll just type on the front of the card and on the back, then save. Pretty simple, but it is faster to upload lists if you have them, rather than typing them again.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to respond here or email me at [e-mail]

Good luck!

[Shannon]

OMG, thank you so much, Keith. Here I've been writing out these vocabulary flashcards for the past week. I am going to check this site out immediately. And I will finish the rest of my 400 or so flashcards at this website. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you....

[Keith Rowan II]

Hehe, writing out is so old-fashioned. No more!

We actually have Christine Sadorra to thank. I found it on her webpage -- http://stenonerd.blogspot.com/

It is a lovely page full of great stuff that you should definitely check out if you haven’t already!

I am shocked that I didn’t know about this site earlier and that the vast majority in reporting don’t seem to know about it. This site has been around since 2001 from what I read online. However, it was pretty recent that they added some of the features like auto-flip that make it so great for our practice.

The site is run entirely off donations. I have donated because I feel it is a huge help to me and will continue to be for a long time.

I mainly use it for warmup every day, before school or starting practice. It’s a very easy, efficient way to practice briefs! I always say the words as they come up, and if I have time, I even make up short sentences or phrases. When you have your own card sets, you can combine them and practice multiple sets in one session.

[Barbara Roseman]

Thanks so much. I have been creating flashcards by cutting out steno tape and pasting them to my cards, in order to get the spacing right so that read back is faster. i've entered in some of the briefs with this program using periods as spacers, because spaces didn't seem to work. this seems like a great resource. i will use this going forward for new briefs/phrases. maybe i'll even go back and enter the old ones..

[Keith Rowan II]

Barbara,

Glad you like the site. I am not sure what you mean by spaces not working since I have not had that issue. How are you inputting the cards? I either use their editor, typing stuff in, and it appears exactly the way I type it, or I upload it from a text file. In the text file, I have spaces between each word, and a tab between what goes on the front and what goes on the back of the card. The spaces always show up. Are you doing something different?

[tami carlson]

Hi, Keith.

I think she means she likes to see the outline as it appears on the tape, for example, "blank":
PWHLA FRPB G, instead of PWHLAFRPBG.

I learned to read the spaces more than the individual characters. Sometimes I'm not even sure I know what individual characters go into the feel of a word.

I've been meaning to ask you how you are phrasing "mean" at the end of a phrase? Thanks.

Tami, too

[Keith Rowan II]

Reading by the spaces? I have never heard of that. I am not sure I understand how that works. We simply learned to read the letters that make up the word. I am not sure I get it. :)

[tami carlson]

I don't know how to explain it. If you look at a steno tape, I think you get a lot of information from the configuration, not the little individual letters. For example, SKWRUFRPBGS is unrecognizable to me. If I see it with its natural machine spacing S K W R UFRPB G S, I recognize it immediately.

Tami, too

[Barbara Roseman]

Tami's right in understanding what I mean. I like to see the steno spacing of the word. since the letters always appear in the same space, you can recognize the word not only by the letters, but by the position of the letters.

I discovered today that my "spacing problem" isn't a problem, and i don't really need the periods between the letters to space properly. however, it helps me see that i am including the correct number of spaces. i'm a bit compulsive about this i think.

i made my cards public so if you're interested you can see them. they are court reporting/professional. one is called Bridge Briefs/Phrases and the other is called Theory Phrases. i'm just starting to input my cards so these are far from complete.

[Keith Rowan II]

I looked at your flash cards, Barbara. Very interesting. Lot of great phrases there. I am really trying to understand this space thing, but I must be dense or something. Is this something your teacher taught or just something you felt compelled to do yourself? Is it mainly for words that have a lot of letter combinations that make other letters (like PWEPB is BEN) or do you also use it for words like PAL that are simply what the letters say? And you are saying that you can read PWEPB on the paper with the spaces, but here in my post, you would not be able to read that? That seems to me like a dangerous precedent. If you are doing realtime with a paperless machine, your untranslates will come up on the screen without any spaces, just the raw steno, like PWEPB. You can bring up your notes on the side of the screen, but this would seem to be extra time and effort, in my humble opinion.

Tami, I didn't mean to ignore your question. "Mean" is *M. so I mean is IM*, you mean is UM*, what do you mean you can do WHAOUM*, etc etc. I am guessing your JUFRNGS was junction? For the -NK and -NCTION words, Sten Ed taught me *NG and *NGS. It looks like you use the -FRNG and -FRNGS, which is a great way also! I have dropped the * off of most of my -NGS ones though because there are no serious conflicts. So I use JUNGS for junction, FUNGS for function, etc (if fungus ever came up, I would use the asterisk or two-stroke it).

[tami carlson]

Thanks, Keith. You are not dense; you are lucky.

When you read paper notes, you see the configuration before the individual characters. They say (psychologists) that we (not just court reporters) read words as "patterns," as opposed to the sum of their parts. We know from the ascending and descending and neutral lines of the characters, along with the length of the unit what the word is. This explains why it is so hard to see a typo, and why some typos stand out and others do not. It is also an enormous crutch when you read steno.

I went to school in the mid-90's. We read paper notes and typed on typewriters. (TANGENT: When I took the CSR, I had to go to yard sales and thrift stores in order to find a typewriter with no memory, because they were not commercially available. My obsolete IBM Selectric was forbidden, due to its two-line memory.) Anyway, here is my point: The way I learned to read steno is archaic. You learned to read it in a different age. I live in a paperless world now; so I need to learn to read words without the benefit of shape.

By the way, "Ben" was easy to read. It is just very dense words, like "junction," that I can't read with ease.

Thanks for the discussion. I don't think I would have otherwise known that I need to practice reading spaceless steno. In retrospect, I was often referring to the electronic notes on the right side of the screen during editing.

Tami

[Keith Rowan II]

Tami,


Wow, psychology? Ascending and descending lines? Man, now you are making my head explode! Ha, ha. That's very impressive! I am starting to understand what you mean (somewhat). I guess it's good to be able to do it both ways. And yes, some words are very dense and hard to read. That's for sure. Sorry you had such a problem with the typewriter back in the day! I feel so lucky that I don't have to deal with these type of things as a student. I have a lot of respect for ya!

Just a 21st century kind of guy,

Keith

[Barbara Roseman]

ah, interesting. i see what you mean about untranslates coming up w/o spaces. so, yes, i'm probably overthinking this. but when i see the word with the spaces, it helps me learn it better, to see where the keys are. to recall briefs as i write, i just think the phonetic abbreviation - like jen for general of course. i guess as a beginning student, i've been reading back from tape, not from a cat program, so i'm trying to improve readback skills from tape. i don't think having the spaces will impede my ability to read back w/o them at a later date...i hope!