Interplanetary Flash Cards aims to create an open educational ecosystem combining flashcards, e-learning tools, and interactive articles. It will use spaced repetition and the Interplanetary File System to store user data decentralized. The app will start as a flashcard program and later add features like making cards from highlighted text, an offline lesson creator, and integrating with other platforms. This open approach allows users to access their data across apps while learning effectively with proven techniques like spaced repetition.

1. INTER PLANETARY FLASH CARDS
AN OPEN EDTECH ECOSYSTEM ENABLING SELF DIRECTED LEARNING AND FLIPPED CLASSROOMS

2. CHALLENGES
Current educational software has several big issues,
like lack of synchronicity with other EdTech tools,
over-reliance on good internet connection, platform
specificity, and more.
IPFC hopes to solve some of these issues by
creating an open ecosystem for sharing data
between educational software.

3. PRACTICAL. PROGRESSIVE.
Educational software needs to fit real life needs of students and
educators and needs to assist with the transition to modern
educational philosophies like student centered learning, project
based learning, and the flipped classroom.
At the same time, a certain amount of memorization is always
required, and research has proven that active recall along with
spaced repetition is the fastest and most efficient way to retain
basic information. Flash card software can do this well, but
needs to be designed as a stepping stone to higher thinking and
not the end result of an education.

4. IPFC SYNTHESIZES
EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES:
SPACED REPETITION FLASHCARD APPS
E-LEARNING
INTERACTIVE BLOGS
WHILE ADDING UNIQUE
FEATURES:
DECENTRALIZED, OPEN ECOSYSTEM BUILT ON THE
INTER PLANETARY FILE SYSTEM (IPFS)
FASTER CARD AND LESSON CREATION USING
COMMUNITY CONTENT
AND MORE

5. LET’S LOOK AT THESE TECHNOLOGIES
IN DETAIL, AND HOW IPFC SEEKS TO
COMBINE AND IMPROVE UPON THEM
FEATURES REVIEW

6. FLASHCARDS & SPACED
REPETITION SOFTWARE (SRS)
ANKI + SUPERMEMO

7. FEATURES REVIEW: FLASHCARD APPS
SPACED REPETITION AND ACTIVE RECALL
Spaced repetition lets us easily
remember any fact we choose for the
rest of our lives.
Active recall means having to pull the
answer from your memory without
having seen it. Passive recall is more
like a multiple choice question, and
active recall is more like a fill in the
blank.
Spaced Repetition uses a special
algorithm to space out our reviews
over a longer and longer period,
maximizing retention and minimizing
overall study time.

8. FEATURES REVIEW: FLASHCARD APPS
ANKI AND SUPERMEMO
These apps were the godparents of
flashcard programs. They were the
first to apply the findings of memory
and retention from behavioral
psychology and apply Spaced
Repetition in a software program.
IPFC will preserve the effectiveness
of these apps by also implementing
an SRS algorithm without
overwhelming the user with
complicated and confusing options,
and offering a more intuitive, cleaner,
and more modern interface.
Anki

9. FEATURES REVIEW: FLASHCARD APPS
FLASH CARD APPS 2.0:
QUIZLET, DUOLINGO, AND MEMRISE
Only in the last few years have
software based flashcards really
come into the mainstream thanks
to modern and visually pleasing
apps like Quizlet that are geared
towards students in classes and
have easy on-boarding and
sharing and special features built
for the classroom.
Duolingo’s Tinycards
Quizlet

10. FEATURES REVIEW: FLASHCARD APPS
Memrise introduced the innovative
use of ‘Mems’ which are pictures or
examples of the target concept to
use as a mnemonic.
The main drawbacks of these 3
sites are that they are closed
systems and don’t have SRS.
Duolingo is extremely closed, not
even letting users export their
decks. Quizlet offers exporting for
now, but its API is closed to the
public.
Memrise card, and ‘Mem’
MEMRISE AND MNEMONICS

11. FEATURES REVIEW: FLASHCARD APPS
GIMKIT AND KAHOOT
These are two interactive classroom games
where the whole class can compete
individually or in teams to answer
flashcards. You can earn game money,
power-ups and even freeze your classmates.
Students absolutely love these games and
beg teachers to play them. The main
downsides are that students all need
cellphones and fast internet and that
importing the cards can be a hassle. IPFC
hopes to facilitate the use and development
of these games by giving them easier access
and synchronization to user data.
Kahoot
Gimkit

12. •E-LEARNING
•FLIPPED CLASSROOM
•ONLINE LESSONS
MOOCS - MASSIVELY OPEN ONLINE COURSES

13. FEATURES REVIEW: E-LEARNING
THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM
▸ In a traditional classroom the
teacher delivers information to
students through a lecture, and
students practice the material
at home alone.
▸ In the flipped classroom,
students learn the information
at home at their own pace, and
practice with their peers
through projects and
interactive activities in the
classroom.
▸ Teachers need better tools to
make this transition.
The 21st century teacher
is a guide on the side,
not a sage on the stage.

14. FEATURES REVIEW: E-LEARNING
COURSERA, EDX, KHAN ACADEMY, UDEMY
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
on Coursera and edX are often designed
and run by world famous universities and
offer college credit. Students can listen to
world famous lecturers from the comfort
of their home. Students have to answer
comprehension questions while watching.
They complete reading and writing
assignments, take quizzes, and discuss
with teachers and peers.
Non-MOOC online classes like on Udemy
or Khan academy are similar, but often
less strict, self-paced, and without peer
support. Many schools are incorporating
some or all of these ‘e-learning’ functions
into their curriculums.
edX

15. FEATURES REVIEW: E-LEARNING
TED ED LESSON CREATOR
TEDed lesson creator is a tool that lets teachers
take a youtube video and insert questions,
prompts, or flashcards for the students to answer
as they watch. This is crucial to a flipped classroom
approach. It provides scaffolding to the e-learning
that makes sure that students are actively
engaging in the material and not just passively
absorbing it.
It’s basically like a stripped down MOOC lesson
creator that’s much easier and faster for teachers
to use. MOOC creation software is often too
overwhelming for teachers in a hurry. The main
drawbacks of TEDed lesson creator are that it’s not
available in China and offline, and that the
prompts or flashcards and students’ answers aren’t
easily exportable or syncable to another app.
TEDed lesson creator

16. INTERACTIVE BLOG
ARTICLES
THE QUANTUM COUNTRY BLOG + MEDIUM’S HIGHLIGHTING FEATURE

17. FEATURES REVIEW: INTERACTIVE BLOGS
QUANTUM COUNTRY ARTICLE
WITH SPACED REPETITION
As you read you are prompted with
flashcard questions about what you just
read, much like a MOOC. Already
innovative, they also added Spaced
Repetition. The user is asked for their
email, after which the website will send
reminders to review the important points
from the article over longer and longer
spaced intervals.
This is a great way to make sure readers really retain the
information long term. But this approach is not scalable,
we wouldn’t want emails from thousands of different
blogs. Using IPFC, cards could be added instantly to a
user’s existing cards on IPFC or synced to their favorite
SRS flash card app.
Question prompt
Email Signup

18. FEATURES REVIEW: INTERACTIVE BLOGS
MEDIUM’S HIGHLIGHTING FEATURE
While reading a Medium article, users
can drag and select a line of text. A
menu pops up with an option to
highlight. To the right of the text,
users can see how many people
highlighted a specific line. IPFC will
expand on this concept by adding a
create card option after selecting text.
Users who enable the IPFC browser
extension will be able to see how
many people made cards from that
line in the article. They will also be
able to see what those cards are, and
add them to their own collection with
a single click. Cards would be ranked
by number of people who collected it.
on the right displays ‘Top Highlight’
on the right displays ‘Highlighted by…’

19. TO REVIEW, IPFC WILL HAVE:
Spaced Repetition (SRS) flashcards like Anki but with
Intuitive, and visually pleasing UI and UX like Quizlet
fast lesson creation like the Ted Ed lesson creator
Interactive articles with highlighting, and community and creator
inserted flashcards like Medium and the Quantum Country blog
ALL LINKED TO ONE OPEN DATABASE
Data is stored on the IPFS, not on any company’s private
database. The users own their data.
Users can seamlessly try new apps that use their card data.
Users never worry about investing time and energy in a
platform that will disappear or hold their data hostage.
Developers feel comfortable adding to the ecosystem for
the same reason.

20. ROADMAP

21. STAGE ONE: FLASH CARD PROGRESSIVE WEB APP
Basic card review with SRS
Basic card and deck
creation
IPFS integration for storing
decks and media files
Basic importing and
exporting to other
flashcard apps
swipe right for rememberedLink to prototype: prototype on Figma

22. STAGE TWO: BROWSER EXTENSION- CARD CREATION FROM TEXT ARTICLES
•Highlight text, then make a card from
it, saved to a new collection by default
•Select a word from the highlighted
sentence to create a cloze (fill-in-the-
blank)
•See what other people have
highlighted and what cards they’ve
created
•Scroll horizontally to see more cards
for a highlight, the most popular cards
are first
•Add those cards to your collection
with one click
•Cards that the author created are thick
bordered. Optionally only see those
cards
appear
here
prototyping in progress

23. STAGE THREE: LESSON CREATOR
•Like the TEDed lesson creator,
but cards can be added to IPFC
account
•Should be able to use any
video, not just youtube
•Optional to download lesson,
available offline
•Prompts can optionally be pop-
up during video, like other
MOOCs.
•Can be a combination of the
text based lesson from stage two
prototyping in progress

24. STAGE FOUR: ADVANCED FUNCTIONALITY
•Flashcard notes field
•Autocomplete, predictive card
creation, hooked up to dictionary
and encyclopedia APIs.
•Web crawling to automatically
import Duolingo and other
closed platform’s cards
•Anki plugin, Anki SRS import
export.
•Better IPFS integration. option
to run IPFS client in-app.
Eliminate use of private server
prototyping in progress

25. LINKS
▸Quizlet quizlet.com
▸Anki ankiweb.net
▸Duolingo duolingo.com
▸Gimkit gimkit.com
▸Kahoot kahoot.com
▸Coursera coursera.org
▸edX edx.org
▸Udemy udemy.com
▸Khan Academy khanacademy.org
▸TedEd lesson creator ed.ted.com/lessons
▸Quantum Country quantum.country/qcvc
▸Medium medium.com