Using iTunes Star Rating to organize your flashcards

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One problem with audio flashcards is that there isn’t a good way to organize them when on the go. You can’t hi-light them, separate them into separate stacks, or throw away bad cards. Everything is digital audio!

There is one way to mark your cards on the iPod, however, and that’s to mark your mp3 file with the star rating. This star rating was meant to be a way of rating your music collection as to how much you like each song. You can also use them to mark your audioflash cards.

Keep in mind that you need your iPod to be set up for autosyncing for this to work (read more about this here).

Sorting your favorite and least favorite cards:
One of my favorite uses of the star system is to remove super-easy questions from my player. For example, if I come across a card that I never want to hear again, I mark it with a one-star rating. The next time I sync with iTunes, this one-star rating ports over to the computer where I can see it. I then group these crummy questions and delete them all at once!

You can use the star system to label the questions however you like. For example, you could create your own system that looks like this:

5 Star: Very Hard, want to hear often
4 Star: Tricky, want to hear this one a few more times
3 Star: Read more about this when I get time
2 Star: I think card is wrong, better check
1 Star: Delete as soon as possible
0 Star: Default

Write this down on a piece of paper and tape the legend on your iPOD. Whatever! The next time you synch to iTunes you can group all your stars together and act on them if you want. Personally, I use this less complicated system:

5 Star: Super hard or high-yield question that I want to hear again
4 Star: Pretty good question that’s worth hearing again

1 Star: Delete this question, either it’s too simple or bonkers

The Smart Star Playlist!
The true power of the star-rating system is only realized when you combine it with smart-playlists. You can create a smart playlist that will suck in all your 5-star questions. Or make a bigger smartlist that combines your 4 or 5 star questions.

Now, everytime you rate any question as 5 or 4-stars, it automatically gets sucked into this star playlist. This smartlist update occurs directly within your iPod, so you can build a collection of good questions without even connecting to your computer. When you DO synch to iTunes, the star ratings will update as well! Cool!

Here’s my smart playlist to organize my difficult 5-star questions:

Summary:
Star ratings are a great way to organize your lists while away from your computer. They allow you to prioritize questions and create more intelligent playlists. They take a little work to initially set up but they work great for singling out difficult questions while on-the-go. You may want to check out my own personal playlist rules (that I use for these cards) to get an idea of how you might organize your flashcards.