Main contents
Archive for the 'the content' Category
March 1st, 2008
In my last post, I indicated that I wanted to add some more children’s books to the flashcard offerings at Moone Leaf. Well, the folks at the Rosetta Project are a little possessive of their material. They use JavaScript to make downloading their images impossible and warn that taking images or text from the site is “electronic theft”. While I am pretty sure that copies of public domain images cannot be “stolen” and I am plenty able to use my mad screen-capture skillz to grab their images, I have decided to stick with using Project Gutenberg books for now, since there are plenty of them.
The main problem with Project Gutenberg, however, is that the books are not very well organized. While I can search on title or author, there is no way to search for picture books or books for young children. And so it has taken me quite some time to compile a list of picture books for possible conversion to this site. Since I am a caring, sharing sort of person, here is the list so far:
Posted in resources, the content | No Comments »
February 28th, 2008
Time has been getting away from me lately and I haven’t had much time to devote to the flashcard project. I have noticed that my DD (who is now a two-year-old!) is starting to be more interested in stories than just pictures, and I found a beautiful site dedicated to public domain illustrated children’s literature. Check it out!
the Rosetta Project - Pre-Reader and Very Early Reader
Many of these books can be adapted to my website with little or no modification! I am starting to feel inspired to do a couple this weekend… but have so many other things I should be doing… we’ll see 
I also found a site by someone who did the Glenn Doman flashcards with her son for a year and who made all of her flashcard sets available online. I don’t think the images are public domain, but it is a good place to get ideas for complete sets without having to do so much research first:
Classical Mommy - The Bits Collection
Unfortunately, she ultimately came to a negative conclusion about the method, but after reading her thoughts I still think that the online flashcards approach minimizes the negatives and maximizes the positives of the program for the following reasons:
- Using online flashcards minimizes the amount of time needed to develop the materials. Okay, obviously I’m putting a lot of time into it, but my visitors can get the benefit of my work with zero effort.
- There is much less effort involved in running the sessions. Instead of drilling the flashcards with my daughter, I can concentrate on cuddling with her and telling her how sweet and smart she is.
- My daughter gets to choose from eight sets which ones she likes the best, making the learning process more child-directed than the Doman method.
I have noticed some interesting trends lately:
- She never picks the cards with words only. Words and pictures together are much more entertaining.
- Ever since I added the numerals set, she never picks the red dots numbers any more.
- She loves looking at the common words over and over.
- When the common words are read in German, she usually says the English word instead of the German.
- When she looks at geography sets, she doesn’t repeat the countries any more. Instead she says “map” for each slide. The same thing with the dogs and dinosaurs, she just says “dog” or “dinosaur” for each slide.
Posted in resources, the content, the little girl (2/06) | No Comments »
January 26th, 2008
I have completed my goal of posting one dozen new sets this weekend. There are some maps of Africa, famous scientists, more foods, and more German, all rounded off with the Ancient Wonders of the World. There is also a partial post of Denslow’s Mother Goose, from Project Gutenberg. I am breaking this book into volumes because there are so many nursery rhymes and my girl’s attention span is fairly short. I like making content because it is fast and easy and I see instant results!
Posted in the content | No Comments »
January 21st, 2008
It has been almost a month since I updated anything on this site, and that is because I have been working on restructuring the database and rewriting the flashcard builder interface. And Christmas. I have some really neat plans for interface upgrades in the future, but it will probably take me about 3 months to implement them.
In the meantime, my friend Sara visited me this weekend, and she is from Germany, so please enjoy learning some German words with my new language sets. THANK YOU SARA! I still have more recordings to process, so more German sets are to come. I also have some number sets up in Spanish and Arabic, thanks to Ray and Komal.
I have been watching the traffic of this site, and I have noticed that I am starting to build a small base of users who return again and again. It is so encouraging to know that a few other people out in cyberspace are using my flashcards! I wanted to launch this blog to try to connect with regular users, to let you know what updates are in the works and to get your feedback and experiences with the flashcards. I may also write some technical posts on how to design web applications with PHP, mySQL, and Javascript. This blog uses WordPress with the Tm Clear n 1 1.0 theme, with very little modification, just my menu bar at the top. Please leave me a comment if you have time.
The other thing that is encouraging is using the flashcards with my younger daughter, Liane. She will turn 2 in February, and she has been playing with the flashcards since about 18 months. Her favorites are the animals and the household words, but maps and presidents and famous paintings all take their turns, too. Whenever she sees me on the computer, she runs up and demands flashcards!
Posted in the content, the little girl (2/06), the webapp, traffic | No Comments »