Open Window Software News Fall 2007 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - AutoMC and AutoFIB from Standard Pairs 2) 25% Off Back-to-school Upgrades 3) Adding Content to Leitner-mode Files When No Pairs Are Due 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Use Notepad to Practice Long-answer Standard Pairs 6) Expansion of Wildflower Study File 7) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - AutoMC and AutoFIB from Standard Pairs This highlight is taken from the How Do I Decide Which Pair Types To Use in the How Do I...? section of the Help file's Contents tab. A good place to check when you have a "How Do I...?" question! WinFlash Educator has a very useful option that can automatically generate fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice Q&A pairs from standard Q&A pairs. This feature is accessed in Options|Q&A Modes. This raises the question "why should I bother to enter 'real' fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice Q&A pairs when the program will do this automatically?" Maybe you shouldn't. If you're building informal vocabulary files or other topics for personal study, the questions framed by the program's automatic algorithms may be quite sufficient for your use - especially if you make good use of the Categories field when building your files. The program chooses 'wrong' MC answers from within the same category first, thus improving their believability. Here are some reasons why you may want to take the time to enter 'real' FIB and MC Q&A pairs: FIB - You want to allow more than one answer to be accepted as correct - e.g. in the program's Quick Tour demo file the second Q&A pair asks the FIB question "2 + 2 = ?". The answer is programmed to allow either "4" or "four" to be accepted as a correct answer. An automatically generated FIB can only accept one answer as correct - the one given in the standard Q&A pair's Text for Answer field. Thus, if "4" was entered as the answer when constructing the Q&A pair, "four" would be marked incorrect if entered as the FIB answer in study mode. - You want to require multiple entries for a single FIB Q&A pair - e.g. the program's Spanish Vocabulary demo file Q&A pair that asks you to conjugate the verb 'ser'. This type of FIB cannot be auto-generated. MC - You want to make the choices more difficult. The program constructs the auto-generated MCs by using between three and five of the answers for other Q&A pairs to be the wrong answers for the current Q&A pair. The quality of the wrong answers is improved if you use Categories when constructing your file, since the program tries to pick wrong answers from within the same category as the current Q&A pair. - A teacher may wish to tailor the wrong answers to be harder to discern from the correct answers - especially for use in tests. - You want to use the 'multiple correct answer' feature of the real MC function - e.g. the Quick Tour demo file's question about the Boston Tea Party. Auto-generated MC's have one and only one correct answer. --------------------------------------------------- 2) 25% Off Back-to-school Upgrades Are you or your child heading back to class? Upgrade to the latest version and get a 25% discount from the usual upgrade price. Just enter "Back-to-school Discount" in the comments section of the on-line order form! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Adding Content to Leitner-mode Files When No Pairs Are Due Those of you who have been reading our newsletter for a while will remember that we've encouraged users to trust the Leitner-mode scheduling - "Have time to study but there aren't any pairs due today? Read a book, learn a new subject or go out and get some fresh air!!" This was in the 20070201 issue available on the website if you'd like to read the entire article. Unfortunately, earlier versions of the program had a problem when you wanted to add a pair or otherwise edit the deck and no pairs were due. Opening the deck would bring up the 'Leitner Pair Status' dialog offering to switch on the Allow Pairs To Be Asked Before Due option. To get to the editor you had to click "Yes" to this, open the editor, do your edits and then turn the option off again if you wanted to continue to use the Leitner scheduling. Now you can simply open your study file using File|Open in Editor. Leitner-mode files will open directly into the editor whether or not any pairs are due. After completing work in the editor, the file will be re-opened appropriately. If new pairs have been added they will, of course, be due. If not, or if the pairs have been added outside the currently selected range, the Leitner Pair Status box will appear allowing you to close the file. --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it comes along if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing their order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Use Notepad to Practice Long-answer Standard Pairs One of the uses for the Standard pair type is to ask questions like "Discuss the relative importance of the primary causes for the Civil War." An essay question if I ever saw one :-) If you have files that contain this type of pair this tip is for you! Instead of mumbling to yourself in your head, composing a stream-of-consciousness answer for this weighty assignment, open a copy of Notepad and actually type in your answer. Typing in your answer will let you compose a much better response and also allow you to compare what you've written with the text stored in the answer. You'll be less likely to kid yourself that your mental answer was correct when, in fact, it wasn't really complete or well organized. I strongly believe that typing in an answer (using FIB whenever possible and the above strategy when it's not) is the quickest way to master material. The more senses involved in the study session, the better! --------------------------------------------------- 6) Expansion of Wildflower Study File Over the summer I've been using the library's wildflower study file as a basis for expanding my own study of the local Rocky Mountain wildflowers. The collection is now up to 41 different flowers and I've re-uploaded this file to the library. Many of the flowers are found in other areas of the country as well as Canada, so if you're interested in wildflowers you can use this deck as a starting point for your own collection. Here's the URL for the link to the file on the library page: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfusers.htm#Wildflowers --------------------------------------------------- 7) Latest In-line Program Updates The 10.10.01 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected issue where selecting NO in the warning for saving .fls file didn't save as a .flu file as the warning says it will 2. Enhanced QuickDeck so that Shift-Tab moves backwards through the file 3. Corrected hang in Editor when Leitner mode file has Intro and no pairs due 4. Added Warning Dialog when pasting a graphic into the text portion of a file 5. Added code to save Editor's One Line per Pair setting between sessions The 10.10.00 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Disabled ShowMyAnswer button when displaying the answer for Standard Pairs 2. Enhanced the Import from Windows Clipboard mode to handle Unicode and font effects 3. Corrected issue where an overwrite of a file by imported data did not correctly remove some of the support files that had been associated with the overwritten pairs 4. Fixed problem that caused imported text to be difficult to select and edit 5. Fixed similar problem with files created by the Create Composite Source File tool 6. Corrected problems with the server version caused by Vista 7. Fixed problem where a pasted table in Q or A text didn't restore/display properly 8. Fixed crash in Basic and Scholar when creating .fls (old source format) file 9. Fixed problem in filter where the deselected field(s) referenced the wrong attribute 10. Corrected problem in returning from an Open In Editor session in a Leitner-mode file 11. Enabled hyperlinks in regular text for Q and A 12. Fixed the installer so it doesn't remove the uninstall for previous versions of the program 13. Added shortcut keys to toggle Bold, Italic and Underline in editor The 10.00.06 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem on some systems where the internal program menu links to Help items and Demo items were non-functional 2. Fixed problem where the Q number did not always match the A number on the first pair displayed after returning from an editing session The 10.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected problem with saving the audio file associated with the introduction 2. Fixed problem with running study files located on CDROM's 3. Fixed 'Can't locate v10.jpg' error when new file was created immediately after viewing the Unicode demo file 4. Corrected conflict between the Bullets and Numbering dialog and having skins turned on 5. Modified right-click popups in the Editor so that they are consistent, adding the Thesaurus function that was missing from most of them The 10.00.04 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. No longer need to have an 'actual character' in the Q or A - a stand-alone graphic or object will now work correctly 2. Locked out redisplay of Intro when AutoPilot is running 3. Added 'possible delay' warnings when the advance statistics button is pressed and when a print preview is being generated 4. Printer setup can now be called from Produce Printed Test 5. Open to Editor Find and Replace "no more matches" message corrected 6. Modified filtering so priority pairs can be extracted 7. Changed defaults for table/card printing 8. Modified directory usage to run properly on Windows '9x --------------------------------------------------- Need Help? Have A problem? Check out our online listings of the latest releases and the problems that they've solved: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfprobs.htm If your issue isn't covered there, please send e-mail to support@openwindow.com and we'll do our best to resolve your problem. --------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE: Send e-mail to service@openwindow.com with SUBSCRIBE as the Subject. UNSUBSCRIBE: Simply send an email to service@openwindow.com with REMOVE as the Subject. This newsletter is a free service of Open Window Software and is Copyright © 2007 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved.