How to turn notes into flashcards with just a few clicks
Published: Mar 29, 2024 | By: Lucas Weaver
Complete with custom AI images, voice pronounciation examples, example sentences, and romanized spellings.
You can take the most amazing notes in the history of mankind, but they won’t help you pass an exam or learn the content if you don’t find an effective way to study the notes later.
Obviously if you’re reading this post then you’re already sold on the idea of using flashcards as a method to study those notes, so now you’re at the point of figuring out how you can work smarter and not harder by turning those notes into flashcards with some fancy AI tool that does all the work for you.
Well lucky for you I have built just such a tool, and now I’m writing about it in this blog post so the Google gods will send me people just like you who will sign up for my tool and help me pay my rent.
But enough about me, let’s talk about the tool and how you can use it to create flashcards from your notes.
Creating flashcards from notes
Very simply all you need for this process is some notes that you’ve already taken. They can either be in the form of handwritten notes or in some form of a text doc. However, if they’re handwritten, they need to be easy to read (sorry doctors!).
Once you have your notes in a usable format, such as a word doc or a pdf, then you can simply upload the file in your Weaver School dashboard to create flashcards from it.
On your Flashcard Sets page click on the “Create from File” button, then follow these 6 easy steps:
Step 1: Enter a name and description for your flashcard set.
Step 2: Choose either definitions or translations for the backs of the flashcards.
Step 3: Enter your target language.
Step 4: Enter your native language.
Step 5: Select a file containing the text you want to create flashcards from.
Step 6: Click the "Upload" button.
After you’ve finished those steps, the software I’ve built will use a combination of AI providers behind the scenes to automatically select the relevant vocabulary words from the text in your file and create flashcards for you with either definitions or translations, depending on what you selected.
If you’re learning material in your native language, such as for school, then you’ll want definitions. If you’re using flashcards to learn a foreign language, then you’ll want the translations option.
What's included in the flashcards?
The beautiful thing about this flashcard tool is that these flashcards are totally ready to go as soon as the AI finishes with them. The AI will add images for you, examples of the terms or definitions, as well as an audio example for each term and example.
There's no limit to the number of files you can upload, so you can easily go chapter by chapter through an entire textbook to create flashcards for every unit you need to learn.
Studying your flashcards
Once the AI has finished turning your notes into flashcards, they’ll be available as a flashcard set in your dashboard. Now you can review them using all of our study modes.
For example, you can use image mode to see the image first and then guess the definition or term. Or you can enable definition mode to see the definition first and then guess the term, and vice versa.
Each flashcard will also include an example of the word as well, giving you valuable context for the word or definition you’re trying to learn.
You can also click on the sound icon to hear the word or example pronounced out loud by a human-sounding AI voice.
Review sessions
Our flashcards app also takes advantage of spaced repetition reminders. These are reminders that tell you when you need to review a flashcard again to make sure that you actually store it in your long-term memory.
To make sure you don't forget your new terms, you’ll get review reminders until you’ve marked a word as “Mastered” in your flashcard set.
Obviously the goal here is to get all the flashcards in one flashcard set into the mastered category, going from “Learning” to “Learned” and then “Mastered.”
Until a term is mastered, it will go back and forth between the “Learning” and “Learned” category depending on if our algorithm thinks you need to review it again at that point or not.
Extra features
I also built a feature into our flashcards that allows you to take advantage of a phenomenon called “Neural replay” popularized by neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman.
This phenomenon is when you take small 10-second breaks during learning bouts. During these breaks, studies have shown that your brain rapidly replays all the recent learning repetitions you just recently went through.
This basically allows your brain to get many more learning repetitions in than it normally would, and has been shown to enable learning speeds of more than 10x the average.
All you need to do when studying your flashcards is turn on “Neural Replay” and you will enable these 10-second breaks during your learning sessions and try this phenomenon for yourself.
Not enough features for you?
If the above features aren’t enough to make you sign up, you’re in luck! Since I built this flashcard maker myself, I can always customize it and build more functionality when needed.
If you have something you really need or want, let me know by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to see if it’s something I can work into the product roadmap.
If it’s something that I can build and will help speed up people’s learning, I’m always happy to give it a shot.
Until then, give the existing features a shot and create flashcards using our current tool, and enjoy the experience of enhanced learning powered by AI with the Weaver School.
Once you get in the habit of uploading pdfs and getting access to beautiful flashcards created for you, it'll be hard to go back to your old ways.
Memorization can be tricky no matter what subject you're studying, so any tools you can use to give your learning a boost are worth a try.
Whether you're preparing for exams or tests, studying textbooks, or learning a language, I'm confident our flashcard app can help you move faster on your journey.
Lucas Weaver founded The Weaver School in 2016. He's passionate about using the latest learnings in neuroscience and education to create the best language learning experience possible for our students, so they can quickly build effective language learning habits that will last for years. Lucas is a graduate of Texas A&M University and after 7 years of living in the Netherlands, he is currently traveling through Southeast Asia while learning their languages along the way.
Power up your
language learning
It's never been easier to speak the language you want. Experience the power of AI now.
Create your free account