Learn MEFD's roads with Anki

, 2 min, 378 words

Tags: mount-erie-fire

Here are the steps to get started learning MEFD's roads with the Anki deck I generated over in Generating district familiarity maps with QGIS.

Just a couple setup steps: go to https://apps.ankiweb.net (open source iirc and generally awesome) and download an Anki desktop app for your operating system (I use the desktop app on my computer and spent a few $ for the phone app, since I use it most days, but it's also got a fairly good web interface. In this case I think you need a desktop app to import the deck I'm sharing with you).

(Unimportant context note: This is my go-to spaced repetition software, for when I want to learn a lot of info quickly in a way that will actually stay in my brain over time. The idea is that when you're learning or struggling with a card, it'll show it to you more frequently; as you get stronger at it, it comes up less – broadly speaking it tries to quiz you on things right before you'd forget them.)

Download the anki package from the bottom of this page, which should contain 182 "notes" and twice that many cards, along with the images it relies on (thus how big it is, sorry).

Use the "Import File" button in your desktop app to import the anki package and play around!

For the maps, I'm not certain how it will schedule cards by default; it's possible it'll give you cards in both "directions" (what street is this and where is street xyz) right off the bat, which is not how I learned things (I went through all the "where is street xyz" first before starting to phase in the opposite direction). If you only want cards in one direction you should be able to change the note settings to only produce one "card" per note instead of two. In terms of note ordering, it should give you larger roads first, then smaller roads organized by arbitrarily-defined-by-me regions.

Anyway, I'd love to hear if it works at all for you, and I'm super open to thoughts on how the maps or card structure might be made more useful.

Anki package here