Mental Case Classroom Edition

Owned by Carly Born
Last updated: Sept 16, 2011Version comment


Mental Case is a flashcard application written for the Macintosh and iOS platforms.  You can freely download the Mental Case Classroom Edition for iOS at the iTunes App Store.

Introduction to Mental Case Classroom Edition

Mental Class Classroom Edition is a free flashcard application for the iPod Touch and the iPhone.  Download the Mental Case Classroom Edition from the iTunes App Store to get started.

You can use Mental Class to study digital flashcards, but the power of it is that the program automatically shuffles the flashcards and prompts you to study them at regular intervals.  When you open the application, you see the four default groupings of flascards, called Notes.  Below these, you can add your own collections of flaschards, called Cases. 

The Lesson is a collection of notes that are scheduled to be studied using a spaced-repetition algorithm.  When the Lesson feature is enabled on a Case, the notes in that case are automatically added to the Lesson.  You can enable the Lesson feature on any number of Cases at the same time and then use the Lesson as a cumulative review of everything you’ve studied up to that point.

Studying Notes

Tap the Study button at the bottom center and then choose to study either the Lesson or a specific Case

of notes. 

You are presented with the prompt.  When you have an answer in mind, use your finger to swipe from right to the left on the screen, and then you will see the answer side of the note. 

Mental Class allows you to mark notes as Known or Unknown, which controls the frequency of the notes in the current lesson rotation.  Unknown notes are repeated more frequently until they are marked as known. 

To mark a note as known tap in the lower left corner of the screen., a gray and white checkmark icon will briefly appear to confirm your input.  To mark a note as Unknown, tap the lower right of the screen.

To exit study mode, tap once in the center of the screen to activate the toolbars.  Tap the X in the upper right to exit the study mode and return to the list of Cases.

Downloading Flashcards

  • To download a set of flashcards, tap on the Sharing icon at the lower right of the screen. 
  • Tap the Download from Server button and either use the keypad to enter the web address of the flashcard archive or use the iPods copy/paste feature to paste the address in from an email or another website.
  • Tap the blue Go button to begin the download.
  • Be sure to keep your iPod/iPhone 'awake' during the download process, the download will fail if the device is allowed to go to sleep.
  • When the download progress window disappears, tap the gray Done button in the upper right.

Now you should see your new cases of flashcards below the default groups.

See this page for a listing of the flashcard sets that are available by language.

Editing Case Settings

  • Tap on the Library button in the lower left
  • Tap the Edit button in the upper left
  • Tap the blue circle to the right of the Case you’d like to add to the Lesson
  • Tap the Red circle to the left of the Case name to delete the case.

Here you can designate this Case of Notes as reversible or add the Case to the Lesson schedule.  You can also edit the name of the Case.

Using the Lesson

Cases are not enabled for the Lesson feature by default, you have to turn it on for each of the cases you want to include in the Lesson.

To do this:

  • Tap on the Library button in the lower left
  • Tap the Edit button in the upper right
  • Tap the blue circle to the right of the case you’d like to add to the Lesson
  • Set the Lesson Schedule slider to ON by dragging the slider to the right.

This screen is also where you can indicate if the Notes in a specific case are reversible or not.

Creating Cases and Notes

  • Tap on the Library button on the lower left
  • To create a new Case
    • Tap the + button in the upper right
    • Enter the name of the case and set the Reversibility and Lesson Schedule to ON or OFF
    • Tap the gray Done button in the upper right when finished
  • To create Notes within a case
    • Tap once on the case to enter it’s contents
    • Tap the + button in the upper right
    • Enter the Prompt (side 1) and Content (side 2) of the note
    • Tap the blue Done button to save
    • Tap the Add Note button to create another note