Kanji style screen saver for repetitive reinforcement?

[kitai]

When I am not using Stackz, it would be great if I could have kanji coming up on the screen from my wordlists like a powerpoint slide show - a sort of screen saver which would be good repetitive reinforcement. 

Does anyone have any ideas how the captured wordlist kanji could be easily be displayed like this?

[Chris]

Such a feature could be offered by Stackz, e.g. by using the test dialog with an automatic display advance, or with a dedicated slide show mode. However, since the Stackz learning and repetition concept heavily relies on the user interaction, such a slide show does not really fit in the existent system. But because it's not contradicting the system either, it might be available one day, but it has low priority.

[kitai]

Chris

Many thanks.  So I wonder if there is a "work around" I could achieve this by in the meantime?

[brett.gildersleeve]

There is a great freeware program called KanjiGold that does exactly what you're talking about.  The feature is called PopKanji or PopVocabulary.  It runs consistently in the background and can display either Kanji or Vocab.  You can choose to show the question, answer, or both in seperate windows, and you can position the windows however you want.  I put the question at the top of the screen and the answer on the bottom, so my eyes can't look at both at the same time.

[Chris]

Thank you for this information, it's new to me. Maybe I should have a look to get inspired for a future version :-)

Are there more people interested in that way of learning?
And how (in what stage of your learning) do you use it, i.e. what do you do if you know/dont' know a word?

[brett.gildersleeve]

Well I still use Stackz as my primary learning tool.  I import my lists of already learned entries into KanjiGold and then run it in the background at work.  I glance at it every so often, and it reinforces what I know, and reminds me of what I don't know.  Since it shows you question and answer at the same time, you're not really testing yourself, just refreshing your memory.  So Stackz and KanjiGold are very different in that regard.

[JJ900]

Thanks brett.gildersleeve, that KanjiGold is quite good, certainly good enough for me to realise I wanted the same effect but a bit slicker.

I ran it at work and my (minor) annoyances were having to change the file encoding after exporting a list and having to choose the file each time windows starts up. I placed it above the windows vista sidebar to try to be a bit discrete, but it still appears in the toolbar and the windows appear on top of terminal server sessions! Never the less, can?t complain for the price (free) 

To try to make life a bit easier I have created a Vista Sidebar Gadget to display printed style flashcards in the sidebar: Kanji Slideshow (free download from http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=1d3de133-ff44-4ad5-a2a2-8eff6571489c)

I have tried to make it as simple as possible to get data from Stackz so that cards can be changed regularly. Because of the great system used by Stackz, it is easy to select the vocab I?m struggling with and then its just right click ? export to file. Choose "[EUC] EDICT formatted text" from the "Save as type" drop down list, then point the gadget at that file. That should be it.

It defaults to automatically going through the cards every few seconds but you can set this to zero and have the card permanently on display on the screen.
Because of the way all gadgets are designed, you can have multiple cards on display at the same time ? if you have the desire and the desk-space.

As you have stated, this does not replace going through the Stackz properly, but I do find it handy with words that otherwise have difficulty sticking.

Of course, the main downside might be that it requires Windows Vista

Hope it helps someone else out there.

Cheers,

Jake