GREY OLLTWIT'S FLASH CARDS file:///C:/Olltwit/Flash Cards/Help.

html

GREY OLLTWIT'S FLASH CARDS

From An Idea By Mary Godwin

Minimum requirements: PC Windows 95/98/Me, NT 4/2000, Pentium processor, 16MB RAM, 16 bit High
Colour.

The Idea

A very simple program to help with learning lists of words. The idea was sent to me by a lady called
Mary Godwin, click here to check out her website. Basically you choose a list of words and they will be
shown randomly or in order on screen in the form of flash cards. Apparently there is a set of 220 words
which if learned by sight, are thought to be the key to progressing further with reading. This is called
the Dolch list and I have included all 220 in 10 separate lists by US school grade, to help get you
started. I have left the US Grade names even though I am from the UK, because I don't think the list is
as common here in England, but I could be wrong. In any event the spellings are the same in UK
English and it shouldn't be difficult to compare the age groups with our own classroom ages or if you
are clever, the Key Stages mine field of classification (Well the Key Stages might be clear to teachers
but they have always seemed too full of gibberish to me!). My thanks to the Gemini School for the
Dolch lists which they describe as follows:

"From 50 to 75 percent of all words used in school books, library books, newspapers, and magazines
are in the Dolch Basic Sight Vocabulary of 220 words. They are "service words" (pronouns, adjectives,
adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs) which cannot be learned through the use of pictures.
Because they are used to hold thoughts together, these words must be recognized at a glance before a
child can read with confidence."

You can visit the Gemini School website at www.geminischool.org by clicking here. Thanks also to the
Gemini School for providing the extra word lists that I have added to the program shown as First,
Second, Third and Fourth Grade lists.

In my program you can also add lists of your own, like homework spelling lists etc., and save them for
future or edit them accordingly.

How To Use

On the first screen click on either the I Know How To Play or First Time Here button. Clicking I
Know How To Play takes you straight to the next screen while First Time Here pops up a brief set
of instructions to get you started.

On the main screen you will see a Load A Word List button at the bottom. Clicking this will open a
small window showing the Word Lists. Highlight one by clicking it and then choose the Open button.
The selected word list will then be loaded, Play - Random and Play - In Order buttons will appear at
the bottom and the name of the list will appear in a box at the top. Clicking the Play - Random button
will then show all the words at random, one by one, whilst clicking the Play - In Order button will
show the words in the order they appear in the list. You can alter the speed they are shown by clicking
on the slider bar on the left. Moving it up will make them appear faster and down will make them
appear more slowly. You can also change the colour of the cards by clicking on any colour bar in the
right hand grey column. You can Pause the cards being shown at any time by clicking the Pause
button below the cards. This will be replaced by a Continue button which you need to click when you
are ready to carry on. To re-start the list at any time click the Start Again button just under the
cards. You are also able to use keys on your keyboard for some actions. These are P for Pause, C for
Continue and the UP and DOWN arrow keys for the speed slider bar.

At the top of the colour bar column you will see a box which shows the number of words in the current
list. This decreases by one for each word shown. To choose a new word list to try without restarting
the program, click on Load a word list from the top menu under Program, to produce the Open
window described above. To change the font and size of the words displayed on the cards, select
Options in the top menu and choose Change Font - Flash Cards. This will open a font selector
window where you can choose any font held on your computer. You can also change the size and
colour of the font here. Obviously smaller sized fonts will allow for longer words to be shown. My
Flashcards will also show a wide variety of different languages including the accents etc., so this could

1 de 4 18/04/2018 12:53 p. m.
GREY OLLTWIT'S FLASH CARDS file:///C:/Olltwit/Flash Cards/Help.html

also be useful for language vocabulary lists. You can also show short phrases which are best displayed
with a smaller font size chosen.

Font type, size, colour together with the card colour and time slider values are all saved automatically
for future sessions.

Hear The Words

I have included in this version of Flashcards, the ability to hear the words displayed when run in
conjunction with a text reading program such as HELPread. You can download HELPread as freeware
from http://www.dyslexia.com/helpread.htm. This program like other text readers uses a computer
generated voice to speak the words, which with some tweaking can sound remarkably good. Basically
once you have both programs installed, start up Flashcards and then start up HELPread. Configure
HELPread to listen to the clipboard as my program copies each word there. You should then hear the
word spoken as it appears on the screen.

In this mode you can use the Hide button just below Words on the right hand colour bar. If you click
this button the words will become invisible and the button will be replaced by one called Show. Click
the Show button to make the words visible again. If you have a good text reading program then this
may help to hear the words in a list but not see them, write them down and then compare them with
your word list at the end.

A number of people seem to dislike text reading programs but when you think of the work that has
gone into turning combinations of letters into recognisable words and synthetically creating a sound to
mimic it, I think they are incredible. I myself couldn't possibly make such a program at my current
level of competence, so I have great admiration for those "real" programmers that can.

Edit/Create A Word List

Clicking this in the top menu will show a screen with a text box in the middle where you can type in
your own list, pressing Return/Enter after each word. If you loaded a list on the previous screen then
this will be shown in the box. You can clear the box in the middle by clicking the Clear button on the
right. It is important to remember to press Return/Enter after the last word as otherwise it may not
show up in your list when saved. The button to the left of the input text box is a Quick Help button
which will display a basic set of instructions, when clicked.

In the text input box you can use the Copy and Paste commands together with Undo, Cut, Delete
and Select All. These commands can be accessed in the top menu under Edit or by right clicking in
the text box. To copy a list from elsewhere, click and drag your mouse pointer over a list of words in
any text, word or html (web page) file (they must be arranged in a column) and then while they are
highlighted, right mouse click to produce a pop up menu. Choose Copy and this will copy the
highlighted words to your computer's clip board (memory). Then in the text box in this program
choose Paste from the top menu under Edit or the right click menu and the words copied will appear
in the box. Other commands in Edit menu include Undo, which undoes the last thing you did, Cut
which is like copy except it removes the selected text, Delete which erases any selected text and
Select All which highlights all the text shown ready for copying or deleting.

In the earlier version of this program, lists of words were limited to a maximum of 30 but after being
approached by a number of people interested in using the program for student studies, I have
increased the size to around 1000 words per list. For younger students I do recommend that lists are
kept much shorter, to about 20 or 30, as the attention span, particularly in youngsters with ADD for
whom my programs are designed for, will not be kept so well with larger lists. Word lists of over 1000
will show an error message as although you can reach about 1250, some words may be lost.

If you want to enter short phrases, then keep typing and the words will wrap in the text input box. At
the end of your phrase, press the return button and you should see even with several lines, that the
number in the words box just shows 1. Type another over a few lines and pressing Return at the end
should show 2 and so on. To display these phrases will probably require a small font size to be chosen
in Change Font - Flash Cards.

A list can be saved by choosing Save a word list in the top menu under Program. This will produce a
pop up window with a box where you can type in a name for your word list. When typing a name for
your file there is no need to worry about adding any file extensions like .wds, .txt etc., just a name you

2 de 4 18/04/2018 12:53 p. m.
GREY OLLTWIT'S FLASH CARDS file:///C:/Olltwit/Flash Cards/Help.html

can remember is all that's needed. Clicking the Save button will save it for future sessions and will also
set it as the current list to try. If a list is not saved then you will not be able to try it in the program. I
have built in several reminders to try and prevent lists from being lost without saving them.

On this screen you can also choose to open a previously saved list to edit by choosing Load a word
list from the top menu under Program. Choose the list to open from the pop up window which
appears and this will be loaded into the text box in the middle. Make any alterations and then choose
Save a word list from the top menu, to save it as the current name or as a new list.

Import text list

The Import text list option has been added as the lists are no longer saved as basic text files. This
has enabled me to increase the list size. Old lists can be imported with this function through the
familiar browser load window. Once imported they can be saved as the new wds list file type. Almost
any format of text can be imported here such as txt, rtf, etc.

The Top Menu

Program: Selecting Program in the Top Menu will produce the following Menu items:

New - Will restart the program from the beginning,

Load a word list - Pops up an Open file window, where you can click on a file name and
then click on Open. Double clicking the file name has the same effect. The file will be
loaded into the program and the name of the list shown in a box at the top of the screen,
Save a word list - Will produce a Save window where you need to enter a name for your
file and click on Save. When typing a name for your file there is no need to worry about
adding any file extensions like .wds, .txt etc., just a name you can remember is all that's
needed,
Quit - Exits the program.

Edit: Selecting Edit in the Top Menu will produce the following Menu items for the Edit Box on the
Edit/Create A Word List screen only:

Undo - Selecting this undoes the last operation in the edit text box
Cut - Cuts the selected text to the clipboard ready for pasting elsewhere
Copy - Copies the selected text to the clipboard ready for pasting elsewhere
Paste - Pastes the text in the clipboard to the cursor position in the edit text box
Delete - Deletes the selected text
Select All - Selects all the text currently in the edit text box.

Options: Selecting Options in the Top Menu will produce the following Menu items:

Edit/Create a word list - Takes you to the edit screen where you can edit a current word
list or make a new one of your own, see Edit/Create A Word List above,
Import text list - This is highlighted in the Edit Word List screen only and enables you to
import word lists saved as basic text files, see Import text lists above,
Change Font - Flash Cards - Click this to open a font selector window where you can
choose to set the Flash Cards text to any font type, size and colour on your computer.
Please note that smaller font sizes are best to display longer words and short phrases.
Change Font - Edit Box - Click this to open a font selector window where you can choose
to set the Edit Box text to any font type, size and colour on your computer,
The font types , sizes and colours are saved automatically and will be remembered when
you next run the program
Print - Prints out the current contents of the edit text box on the Edit/Create A Word
List screen.

Help: Selecting Help in the Top Menu will produce the following Menu items:

How to use... - Selecting this produces this help page.

About - Tells you the name of this program and who made it i.e. me.
Grey Olltwit Online - Clicking this will connect you to the Internet and take you to my
website where you will find lots of other free software games and screen savers for
download.

3 de 4 18/04/2018 12:53 p. m.
GREY OLLTWIT'S FLASH CARDS file:///C:/Olltwit/Flash Cards/Help.html

To Uninstall this program go to the Control Panel and double click on Add/Remove programs.
Select Grey Olltwit's Flash Cards in the drop down list of programs. Double click to remove it.

N.B. This was made on a Pentium 166 virus free machine and may not run as well on older machines.
No responsibility is accepted for any loss or damage caused by installing this program.

All my games and screen savers are freeware and are made to help raise awareness to the condition of
ADD/ADHD. You can find out more about ADD/ADHD at our main website, adders.org at
http://www.adders.org

Simon Hensby (aka Grey Olltwit)

Loads more Freeware including games and screen savers can be found at my website at:

http://www.adders.org/freeware

Email: olltwit@adders.org

Broadstairs, England. First made - February 2001. Version 1.8 - March 2002

4 de 4 18/04/2018 12:53 p. m.