Introduction FAQ Flashcard Tips Download Purchase

The iPod is a great mp3 player, and an ideal platform for listening to audio flashcards. Here’s how to get the flashcard files from this site onto your player.

Step 1: Download and Unzip
You first need to download the audio files onto your computer from our download page. There are over 1,400 separate mp3 files, so it would be impossible for you to download them one-by-one. Instead, I’ve “zipped” them together into larger files. You can unzip these files using your computer’s built in unzip feature.

On a PC, right-mouse-click on the file and choose “Extract All” from the pop-up menu. A folder will be created that has all the mp3 files inside.

Step 2: Import the audiofiles into iTunes.
Import the files into iTunes. You choose “File-Import Folder” and locate the appropriate folder on your computers hard drive.

This will pull all the files into the iTunes music directory. Depending upon how you’ve set your iTunes preferences, the mp3 files will remain in their current location, or a copy of all 1,400 audio files will be copied into a new folder within your iTunes music folder.

Step 3: Quick organization of files
At this point, you may find that your iTunes music collection seems to be dominated by audio flashcards. You can organize these audio files into playlists to get rid of the clutter. I’m not going to cover playlists in this article (check out our playlist article) but here are a few quick changes you may want to make within iTunes:

First, you may want to change the visible id3 tags. Right-mouse-click on the upper tab (the thin horizontal bar where it says “name, album, etc.”) and place checkmarks next to the available tags you want. The important ones for us are album and comments (which has the keywords in them) and the star rating system.

Step 4: Copy the flashcards onto your device

Copying the flashcards can be done in two ways, and the method you’ll use will depend upon whether you have your mp3 player set up for manual or auto-sync (you can read about the pros/cons of both these modes in our sync article).

Manual sync: Simply hi-light all the files, and drag them onto your player’s icon

Auto-sync: In this mode, you’ll need to create a playlist, called “All Flashcards” or something similar, and copy the flashcards to this playlist and sync the list.

Summary:
That’s pretty much it. Once you get the files onto your iPod, you can jump listen to them! I’ve created separate “albums” for each subspecialty, allowing you to listen to each subspecialty (retina, glaucoma, etc..) just like you would listen to a CD album.

Once you actually get the flashcards installed, you may find the sheer number (1,400 of them at present) a little overwhelming. I recommend you reading though the other articles in this help section, which will cover topics of playlists, smart playlists, and using the “star” system. iTunes can be confusing, but once you master these concepts, will allow you to organize your cards and search through them with ease!