<p>Index cards are an optimal system of organizing notes. Though, it depends on the class. I would not use index cards in a math class for example, as a math problem is one train of thought that may need an entire page, but for certain classes, index cards have their advantages.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Index cards are smaller and less cumbersome than notebooks. You can carry them more easily and study anywhere.</p></li>
<li><p>If you have a notebook, you may have too little or too many pages. Whereas with index cards you can allocate just the right amount to each class.</p></li>
<li><p>You can move an re-arrange them in any order, making organization easier.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>You can store an entire semester of classes in a 2-3 inch long case. They are great for reference after you complete the courses because they are easily accessible.</p>
<p>It’s unconventional and some people don’t take it seriously, but I go to college to learn rather than to impress strangers. When people question it, I simply reply “My 3.8 GPA is proof that this works.”</p>
<p>I’ve used index cards for math classes. You need to memorize definitions, and they can be useful for learning theorem proofs too if you write the gist of the proof on the back. I also needed to memorize expectation, variance, and pdf’s for common random variables in probability theory.</p>
<p>The biggest problem with index cards is the time investment in making them.</p>
<p>How do i go about using index cards for foreign languages? I usually use them for vocab, but what if i have like 100 vocab? Start off by separating them by categories and study each categories? What about how to study how they’re written?</p>
<p>For Russian I write every word in the vocab section of that chapter on index cards. I separate them by part of speech and for the verbs I write out how they’re conjugated.</p>
<p>For French, I write out all of the vocab for each chapter (as well as anything new that we come to in class) as well. This usually ends up being a huge stack of cards, with a new stack each three weeks or so, so I shuffle them and then work on fifteen to twenty cards at a time until they all feel really familiar. I find that I am able to learn the words better if they’re a random selection of words than if I go through one part of speech at a time.</p>
<p>I never really used index cards before I began using them for French, and it’s ridiculous how effective it is. I went from getting a shaky A/B on the exams to getting an A+ and feeling really confident.</p>
<p>I use index cards for tests, and recently came across quizlet.com where you can type them out and print them, which is much less time consuming…and there’s even an app (for iPhones at least, not sure about other phones) that you can use when you’re not carrying them around…it definitely helped bring my test grades up…</p>
<p>I have a program (free download) called cuecard on my computer which allows you to make and study flash cards on the computer. I rarely use index cards because they don’t work for me at all, but this program is the one exception because rather than flipping over a card the answer appears right below it-- I need to SEE both sides of the card next to each other at the same time in order to have any memory benefit to the activity whatsoever. So that works. Otherwise there’s just no point in using the cards for me, I memorize much better just looking at that same information on a piece of paper, and in that case it isn’t worth the money just to put the information on cards instead.</p>
<p>I’m honestly not a fan of index cards…I lose them, for one, and it’s hard to tell that I’ve lost them. If I use flashcards at all, they’re “virtual” flashcards, (cuecard), which have the additional benefits of being able to attach image/audio files and also share the flashcard files (and hence divvy up the work of creating them.)</p>
<p>Also: Back when I used to use paper cards, I used to cut my cards in half so they’d go further, for vocab. I’d also tape multiple cards together for math/occasional history topics. I had over a thousand flashcards for Academic Decathlon, once.</p>
<p>But, personally, I find notebooks easier. I number my pages and have a table of contents, so it’s pretty easy for me to look a subject up, and I can refer to previously taken notes easily. I used to combine notecards and notebooks by gluing envelopes of notecards into my notebooks, so each set would be stored with the chapter they went with.</p>
<p>I also numbered and labeled each card (“Muscles 1”, “Muscles 2”) etc. so I could tell when card, say number 3, was gone.</p>