Learning Tools

Duolingo Releases Flashcard App

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/20/17

Duolingo, the company behind the game that helps people learn new languages, has released a new program for helping students and others use and create flashcards. Tinycards is intended to help users "memorize anything for free, forever." The app is currently available for web browsers and Apple iOS devices.

Like Duolingo, Tinycards is a game. This one allows users to pick from ready-made collections of flashcards to create their own decks and share them. As users excel, they unlock new levels in the game.

Currently, decks are available for Duolingo's languages, including French, German, Spanish and Portuguese; Chinese; and categories in geography history and science. Under the science category, flashcard sets already exist for eye anatomy, layers of the earth and its atmosphere, the solar system, constellations, human muscles and the skeletal structure, dinosaurs, heart anatomy, frog anatomy, American leaves, the periodic table and the cell structure. For International Women's Day, a user named Paula created a collection of "influential women" in history.

In time Tinycards could prove as popular as Duolingo. As one user proclaimed in a review on the Apple Store, "I've taken Spanish courses four times but couldn't get past the head knowledge to conversational [speech]. With Tiny cards and Duolingo together I am on my way. It really works. I spend 20 to 30 minutes a day while taking my daily walks...."

Duolingo, created by Luis von Ahn, a consulting professor in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and Severin Hacker, a former Ph.D. student from the same institution, has claimed to be the most popular app in the history of Apple with 120 million users. Those users complete 6 billion exercises on the language app every month, according to the company.