Saturday, January 10, 2015

Quizlet Continues to be an Innovator in No Cost Education Technology

By Sean Scarpiello

Quizlet, an online-based education application, has been around for years as a beneficial education tool. Essentially, Quizlet acts as a digital flash card builder which allows users to test themselves on their course material. While this concept seems simple enough, Quizlet has grown over the years to include even more features, that I recently discovered after using this application.

Users can begin by simply signing up and once completed they have access to unlimited space for an infinite amount of flashcard. Further, students or teachers can share their accounts with each other, thus granting them access to many sets of flash cards to use as a study resource. To use Quizlet, users simply type in the word or question they would like to remember on one side of the card and then enter the definition on the other side of their digital flashcard. One feature that Quizlet has recently added to aid users is an automatic defining function. For instance, if a student is trying to learn new vocabulary words, they can simply type in the vocabulary words and click define. Quizlet then pulls up a list of common definitions for this vocabulary word from which the student can pick the meaning they are looking for, thereby eliminating the tedious and time consuming process of typing out long definitions. In addition to this, Quizlet also now offers a language translation tool. In this section of the application, students can type in their list of  English words (or any other language) and then click on the language they would like their word list to be translated to. This function is extremely useful for students in a language class, as they can increase the number of flashcards in a matter of minutes. Then, since self-testing is an active form of learning where students are deeply engaged in material content, Quizlet enables students to quickly memorize long lists of words which need to be integrated into their knowledge.

Beyond these new functions, Quizlet now offers more than a simple flashcard to read and flip on a digital platform. Now, Quizlet has testing and game functions where students can convert their flashcards into a multiple choice, true/false, or matching quiz. Students are able to design  their own quizzes as well,  the number of questions they would like in each quiz. Quizlet then tracks students’ progress and helps highlight which cards the students  needs to improve upon. The game function offers two games: a speed matching game and a space race game. Here, students can time themselves on how quickly they can recall their flashcard data in a competitive and fun way. While these functions are best used on a laptop or other computer device, Quizlet also has an app available for all devices. Which enables Students to  log into their account  from anywhere and test themselves on the same sets of flashcards from their computer. Overall, this really makes integrating vast amounts of knowledge easy as students have access to thousands of flashcards in seconds.

During the past few years, it is fantastic that Quizlet has continued to grow and improve on its already brilliant idea. Furthermore, Quizlet offers all of its contents and ease of learning to students at no cost. Plus, it enables students to collaborate with each other through account sharing functions. Therefore, Quizlet has continued to be an innovator in the education field by bringing improved education technology to students at no cost.

Source: http://quizlet.com/

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