Anyone have experience with SuperMemo

[02115]

Has anyone bought SuperMemo or SM for PDA? According to medfriends.comhttp://www.medfriends.org/downloads/downloads.htm it seems like it might be a good tool. How many questions are in this program?

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[DOctorJay]

you can get the freeware from the university of utah med student site. you can also download hundreds of "flash cards" from their site that are basically things taken directly from First Aid. it's a really nice way to study once you've been through FA already. the program keeps track of how well you do and tests you more frequently on the things you don't remember as well. supposedly you will memorize things 10-50X faster than regular flash card testing (according to their site).

the other nice thing about this software is that you can make up your own flash card databases and using a program called "filez" you can beam the databases to other users, so you and your friends can come up with more flash cards and all share.

there's a lot to sift through so if you're prepping for boards now it probably isn't worth it, but if you just finished first year this would be a great tool to use along with your classes and to keep the information continually fresh in your mind.

hope this is what you were looking for

 

[lord_jeebus]

I've been using supermemo (PC version) since last August. All the flashcards are of my own creation.

It's not designed for cramming and is probably not the best tool for that. It is designed to optimize your retention of material over time. In essence, to prevent cramming. In the long run the idea is to maintain retention of a set of items with the minimum necessary effort. (Which is still quite a bit of effort.)

There are lots of flashcards out there for it, but unless you have a lot of time you probably won't be able to get through them all.

 

[Pegsie]

I bought it a couple of weeks ago and love it...it really helps my memorization, so good for all those little facts that you put off memorizing out of first aid. I used the flashcards from Univ. of Utah, and added in some new stuff (their flashcards were made a couple years ago).

Couple days after I bought it, though, I found this freeware program: Twinkle. It's supposed to have all the features of SuperMemo, and you can import supermemo databases using the included converter. Wish I had seen it before I shelled out the $20. Oh well, desperate times (or panic) called for desperate measures.

 

[MaxPower]

I have both SuperMemo (for the medfriends flash cards) and I make my own cards for Flash Card Master (which I prefer but only supports one database at a time). I usually put in things that I have studied but don't remember. I think they are very useful for those memorization things that you have problems with. I usually type up questions for myself when I get things wrong even though I have learned it before.

The nice thing about FCM (and I think SuperMemo might do something similar) is that it asks you the same cards again if you got it wrong the first time. It keeps asking you until you score a certain level. I think it does help you memorize faster, but you have to have the right kinds of questions (e.g. "most common cause of XXXX" or "drugs that cause SLE-like syndromes")

 

[rmm262002]

I downloaded *.pdb files from medfriends and U of Utah, but I can't seem to do anything with them. I am only using Supermemo on my PC, not on a Palm; are those files only for Palms?

 

[winsicle]

I downloaded *.pdb files from medfriends and U of Utah, but I can't seem to do anything with them. I am only using Supermemo on my PC, not on a Palm; are those files only for Palms?

I think the ones from MedFriends are PDA only. Utah's site has PDA and PC versions. FYI - the MedFriends ones are IDENTICAL to the Utah ones.

 

[lord_jeebus]

I think, but can't confirm right now, that you can use the program to convert palm cards to the PC format.

I downloaded *.pdb files from medfriends and U of Utah, but I can't seem to do anything with them. I am only using Supermemo on my PC, not on a Palm; are those files only for Palms?

 

[winsicle]

I think, but can't confirm right now, that you can use the program to convert palm cards to the PC format.

LJ - is there a way to convert a PC document (i.e., MS Word) to the PDA cards?

thanks

 

[lord_jeebus]

you can convert text to cards but it has to be written in a specific format