BINGO Update: Multiplayer and Single Player

You may of noticed that you can create a Multiplayer BINGO Room for any notecard set on Easy Notecards that has at least 10 full (front and back) notecards.

To create a Multiplayer BINGO Room

Step 1: While viewing a notecard set, click the blue "BINGO" button

Step 2: Click the "Create a new Game Room" link under Multiplayer

Step 3: Enter the "Room Name", select options and click the green "Create Room" button

Multiplayer BINGO Rooms can hold up to 25 players and must have at least 2 players for the game to begin. An account is not required to play.

View available Multiplayer BINGO Rooms

Single Player Mode is in the works and will be available sometime in mid July. In Single Player Mode you play against computer opponents.

Hope you are having a great Summer!

http://www.easynotecards.com

New Multiplayer Bingo Game Ready For Final Testing!

We're very excited to announce that our 1st multiplayer game, Bingo, is ready for final testing.

WHEN: Tuesday, June 26th from Noon EST to 11:59PM EST.
WHERE: http://www.easynotecards.com/bingo_rooms

There will be many Bingo Rooms open for testing. Use our Contact Form (subject "Bingo") to provide feedback (suggestions, comments or problems) about the game. You can also provide feedback by posting a comment to this blog post.

More About the Game
Once Bingo is officially released in a week or so users will be able to create a Bingo Room for any notecard set available on Easy Notecards! Also, we are working on a Single Player Mode that will be available sometime in July.

There are 2 Game Types:

• Cover All - A valid BINGO is when all items are selected. Uses a 3 x 3 card for notecard sets with less than 30 notecards.
• 5 In A Row - A valid BINGO is when 5 items in a row are correctly selected to form a horizontal, vertical or diaganol line. Uses a 5 x 5 card for notecard sets with 30 or more notecards.

Features:

• Chat - Talk with other players in the room. You can send a private message to a player by using the @ sign. For example: "@player_name Good Luck!" will only be seen by player_name.
• Multiple Cards - Play up to 3 cards at once.
• Select Bingo Card Data to Use - When creating a Bingo Room you can select to use either the front or back of notecards to be used for the Bingo Card Data.
• Password Protect - You can enter a password to restrict access to the Bingo Room you create.
• Player Stats - When the game is over view selections you got correct, incorrect and missed.
• Speed Up Intermission - By default there is a 1 minute intermission between games. If more than half of the room is ready the intermission will be set to 5 seconds.
• Cumulative Bingo Points - Your overall Bingo Points will be tracked and displayed in Your Locker.

We hope you enjoy the new game that is both educational and fun!

http://www.easynotecards.com

Linking Notecards to a Specific Book

Easy Notecards is the only website of its kind that lets you link your notecards/flashcards to a specific book. We take this one step further by allowing you to also enter the chapters of the book the notecards are for. Since notecards are organized by chapters within a book everything remains well organized and easy to find.

How to link to a book and chapters
When creating or editing notecards you'll notice the Book section. This is where you can link your notecards to a book. The 2 fields are ISBN and Chapter(s). If you don't have access to your book's ISBN simply click the "Find my book" link to search for your book by title, author, subject, etc. For Chapter(s) enter 1 or more chapters the notecards pertain to. If the notecards are not for a specific chapter, you can leave Chapter(s) blank. This will result in your notecards being listed under "No Chapter".

Searching for books
Easy Notecards lets you search for books by ISBN, title, author, subject , publisher and more. It's important to know that when you search for a book only books that have at least 1 notecard set are searched, which at the time of this post is around 150. You can, however, create notecards for any of the more than 15 million books on Google Books. So, if you can't find your book it usually means that no one has created notecards for it yet. You can be the first!


Viewing all notecard sets for a book
Here's where the power of book linking shines through. Check out the Medical Terminology in a Flash! book (image below). Notice how the notecard sets are organized by the chapters of the book. Notecard sets are sorted within chapters by Helpfulness. You have the option to change the sort order to Views or Newest.

Viewing the book a notecard set is linked to
When viewing a notecard set take a look to the right to see the book and chapters the notecard set is for. If the notecard set is not linked to a book then there will be no data for book. The image below shows that the notecard set The Hematologic System is for Chapter 4 of the Practice Questions for NCLEX-PN book.

Locker organization
Your locker organizes Created Sets, Marked Sets and Fav Sets by books. If a notecard set is not linked to a book it will be listed under "No Book". Here's an example of a member's Favorite Notecard Sets:

Linking notecards to a specific book and chapters is not only helpful for the creator of the notecards but also those searching for notecards. We hope you take advantage of this feature and link your notecards to the book and chapter(s) they are based on if applicable.

Development Update:
We're excited to announce that we are currently developing a new game that will be both fun to play and educational. There is no official release date but it should be up and running before the end of this Spring Semester. We'll keep you posted!

http://www.easynotecards.com

New Overview Tab for Your Locker

Before we get started, if you are not familiar with your Easy Notecards Locker check out the blog post Your Easy Notecards Locker.

The new Locker Overview Tab provides a simple yet powerful summary of your locker's content. It's easy to use and saves you time by not having to click on each individual locker tab.  The Overview Tab is the first tab shown when viewing your locker or someone else's. When viewing someone else's locker certain data is not displayed such as recently viewed sets and marked sets. More on that below.

Content on the Overview Tab is broken down into 3 sections: Recently Viewed Sets, Locker Lists and Recent Activity. Let's take a quick look at each of these sections.

Recently Viewed Sets
15 of your most recently viewed notecard sets are displayed 3 at a time. Use the blue arrows to view more notecard sets. Click on the notecard set to continue studying. This feature is only show when viewing your own locker.

Locker Lists
The 4 most recent Created Sets, Marked Sets, Fav Sets, Fav Books and Fav Members are displayed as lists. The Marked Sets list is only shown when viewing your own locker.

Recent Activity
The 4 most Recent Activity Items are shown.

We think the Overview Tab will be a super helpful feature that you will use often.

Other News:
In the past, the matching game did not work correctly on touch-screen devices. We fixed that. Now you can play the matching game on your smartphone or tablet by tapping the cards to select them. Also, when editing a notecard set you now have the option to save it as a new set. When you use this option the original will remain unchanged and a new set will be created.

http://www.easynotecards.com

Study Only The Notecards You Don't Know

Before getting to the exciting news about the new Marking System, we'd like to wish you and yours a Happy & Healthy 2012!

Over the holiday break we were hard at work improving the Marking System for Easy Notecards. For those of you not familiar with the Marking System, here's a quick explanation of how it works:

Each notecard set has 3 piles: All Cards, Marked and Un-Marked . These piles are pretty easy to understand. The All Cards pile will always contain all notecards that belong to the set. The Marked pile contains your marked notecards and the Un-Marked pile contains your un-marked notecards. When you mark a card it will be moved from the Un-Marked pile to the Marked pile and vice versa. Our suggestion for using the Marking System is to mark the notecards you don't know and un-mark them as you learn them. This is only a suggestion. Feel free to use the Marking System in any way that helps you study.

Here's what we did to improve the Marking System:

Marked Cards Remembered
Your Marked cards will be remembered from study session to study session as long as you are signed in. No need to re-mark cards you marked during a previous study session. If you are not signed in only the most recent notecard set you marked cards for will be remembered. Another reason to register for a FREE Easy Notecards account.

Marked Notecards Tab in Your Locker
When you view your own Locker you will notice that we added a Marked Notecards tab (image below). This tab keeps track of all notecard sets you have marked cards for. It displays how many marked notecards the set has and the date you last marked a card for it.

Mark Cards in List View
In the past, you could only mark/un-mark cards in Notecard View. Now you can do it in List View. In List View simply click the card's number (#) to mark/un-mark it. Directly above the list, there is also an option to mark or un-mark all cards. Don't know how to get to List View? When viewing a notecard set click the List View link (image below) located below the Quiz and Matching Game buttons.

Marking System Tabs
We've added tabs (image below) for each of the 3 piles (ALL Cards, MARKED and UN-MARKED) to make it super easy to switch between them. Want to view only your marked cards? Click the MARKED tab. Tabs are available for both Notecard View and List View.

Take the Quiz or Play the Matching Game with Marked or Un-Marked Cards
In the past, all notecards were used for the quiz and matching game. Now you have the option to perform these activities with only Marked or Un-Marked cards. Let's say you marked 20 notecards you don't know for a particular set. Now you can take the quiz or play the matching game using only those 20 cards you don't know. Also, this option will be available for future activities we add to Easy Notecards.

Here's what it looks like when you want to take the quiz for a notecard set that has marked cards (notice you can also select to use random cards):

Print Only Marked or Un-Marked Cards
When printing a notecard set that has marked cards as notecards or as a list you now have the option to print ALL Cards, MARKED Cards or UN-MARKED Cards. Again, this is helpful when you only want to print certain notecards.

This is what it looks like when you want to print a notecard set that has marked cards:

The new Marking System saves you time by letting you study only the notecards you don't know. Questions/Comments about the new Marking System? Feel free to post a comment or contact us.

http://www.easynotecards.com

Semester Wrap-Up

As the semester comes to a close for most teachers and students it also signifies the end of Easy Notecards' first semester. Our members have created over 40,000 notecards for 110+ books in a little over 3 months. It's great to see so many people of all ages and backgrounds benefiting from Easy Notecards. Teachers have used it for in class studying and homework and students have used it to ace their next test.

As Easy Notecards continues to grow we will continue to evolve to meet the needs of you, our users. Your feedback has been and will always be instrumental to the development of Easy Notecards. For example, many of you wanted a better way to separate notecards you know from those you don't. Our current system allows you to mark notecards you don't know. This works good except that your marked notecards aren't remembered for future study sessions. In a few days we will be releasing an enhancement that not only remembers your marked notecards but also allows you to select All Cards, Marked Cards or Un-Marked Cards when taking the quiz, playing the matching game or printing notecards. More on this in a future post.

I'll leave you with a few cool notecard sets from our first semester:

• Presidents of the United States - name, term years and picture for each president
• Planets - name, location, size and picture for each planet
• Laurel APUSH Terms - detailed US History notecards for The American Promise textbook
• Shop Tools - 50+ notecards that includes name and picture for each tool
• Times Table - 81 notecards beginning at 1 x 1 and ending at 9 x 9
• Alphabet for Kids - letter, picture and word for each letter
• Spanish Numbers 1 - 100 - number and spanish word for each number 1 - 100
• Pet Animals - name and picture for animals that are commonly pets
• Top 250 most difficult SAT/ACT words - word, part of speech, definition and example sentence
• Lord of the Flies: practice test - 25 questions and answers
• ...and so many more

Have a Great Holiday Season!

http://www.easynotecards.com

Adding Items to Favorites

With Easy Notecards you can add notecard sets, books and members to your favorites. Before looking at the benefits of doing this, I'll show you how to add and remove favorites.

To add an item to your favorites click the appropriate Add to My Favorite Item Type(s) button where Item Type is either Notecard Set, Book or Member.

Here's the favorite button (circled in red) for a notecard set. The location is the same for a book and member.

Favorites are stored and organized in your locker. Your Easy Notecards Locker

To remove an item from your favorites either do so through your locker or click the Remove from My Favorite Item Type(s) on the item's page.

Benefits of  Favorites
The main benefit of favorites is being able to quickly access items that are helpful to you. For example, to view a book you previously added to your favorites you would go to your locker, click the Fav books tab and click the book.

Another benefits of favorites is the notifications that come along with them. Notifications are short messages about activities that may be of interest to you. Go to Settings to adjust what notifications you receive.

Here are the 3 notifications associated with the 3 favorite types:

1. Favorite Notecard Set - You will be notified if one of your favorite notecard sets is edited
2. Favorite Book - You will be notified if a notecard set is added to one of your favorite books
3. Favorite Member - You will be notified is one of your favorite members creates a new notecard set

Favorites is another way Easy Notecards saves you valuable time and energy.

http://www.easynotecards.com