All BlueprintsEducation
Flashcards with spaced repetition
A learner builds their own decks and reviews what they are about to forget rather than what they already know. How well a card went is what decides when it comes back, and the schedule is worked out from the answers rather than written down in advance.
What you’ll build.
A flashcard app that decides when to show you a card again. Learners build decks and study only what is due today. Each answer pushes that card further out or brings it back sooner, and editing a deck keeps the history its cards already had.
What you’ll learn.
Each sprint is built around one skill. You show you have it in a pull request your team reviews, then explain it in a walkthrough.
Authentication
You can register and sign in a user, keep a request authenticated without asking for the password again, and explain where the credential lives in the browser and why there rather than somewhere else.
Search and filtering
You can search a list by keyword, combine that with filters, and say what the database does to answer the query — including which part uses an index and which part cannot.
Assessments that grade themselves
You can deliver an assessment, grade a submission, and show that answers cannot be read or resubmitted by the person taking it.
Tracking progress through material
You can mark a unit complete, compute overall progress, and keep it correct when the course itself changes.
Roles and permissions
You can give users different roles and have the server refuse what a role may not do — not merely hide the button — and show the refusal working against a request the interface never offered.
Going live
Somebody who has never met you can open a URL and use the product — and you can say what is different about the copy running there, where its secrets come from, and what you do when a release turns out to be wrong.
The roadmap. 8 sprints, 37 tasks.
Every sprint has a goal and a set of tasks. Open a sprint to see the tasks you will pick up.
Whose cards these are
Somebody can make an account, come back to it a month later, and not be thrown out of the app while it is sitting open.
4 tasks
- A learner can register and land signed in
- Signing back in a month later still works
- A session left open over lunch does not throw anybody out
- Signing out on a borrowed machine actually signs you out
Cards worth reviewing
A learner builds a deck of their own, and can still find one card in it when there are twenty thousand.
4 tasks
- A learner can make a deck and put a card in it
- Typing two hundred cards in one sitting
- A card can be corrected or thrown away
- Finding one card in a deck of twenty thousand
The answer decides the date
How well a card went is what sets the next time it is seen, and the product is the one that works that out.
5 tasks
- A review session hands over one card at a time
- Each answer sets the next date, and the browser does not get a vote
- Getting a card wrong brings it back today without erasing its history
- Each answer says what it will cost before it is given
- A card that keeps catching somebody out is named as one
What counts as today
What is due is decided against the learner's own day, and the number on the deck is the number of cards the session gives out.
5 tasks
- A learner says where they are and when their day starts
- Due is worked out when somebody asks, not written down in advance
- The clock on the device cannot make a card due
- The count on the deck is the number of cards the session gives out
- Crossing a time zone does not give anybody two Mondays
Coming back to four hundred
Three weeks away is a queue somebody can finish in a sitting, not a wall they quit at.
5 tasks
- A day has a limit, and the learner sets it
- A capped day spends itself on the cards nearest to being lost
- A card recalled three weeks late is credited for surviving three weeks
- Cards a learner cannot face can be put aside
- The deck says what today holds and what is not coming today
Studying off the schedule
A learner can practise anything at any time, and nothing outside a real review moves a date.
4 tasks
- Practice: any cards, any time, and no date moves
- What makes practice harmless is the product, not the screen
- Nobody can answer a card that is not theirs
- Practice does not pretend to be study
The deck changed underneath
A deck edited today keeps the history its cards earned yesterday, and a card that now asks a different question starts again on purpose.
5 tasks
- Fixing a typo does not cost a card its schedule
- A card that now asks a different question can be started again
- Three hundred new cards in an old deck do not become a backlog
- A card moved to another deck takes its schedule with it
- Deleting a card does not rewrite what happened on the days it was answered
Somewhere a phone can reach
The product is on the internet at its own address, usable one-handed, and a year of somebody's answers survives the machine it lives on.
5 tasks
- A stranger can open it at its own address
- Nothing it needs exists only on the laptop it was written on
- Five minutes at a bus stop, with one hand
- A release that turns out to be wrong is undone the same hour
- A year of answers survives the machine it lives on
Read before you build. The best engineers do.
Senior engineers read the docs before they touch the code. Every Blueprint comes with short documents on the product and its world, the kind a team hands a new hire. Read them well and you ask sharper questions and walk into every review prepared.
What you are building
The product, who it is for, and what finished means.
How forgetting works, and what a schedule does about it
The evidence behind spaced repetition, what an interval and an ease are, and why the schedule is computed rather than written down.
More education Blueprints.
Class attendance register
A register for one class: the tutor marks who turned up, each learner sees their own record and the rate it adds up to, a mistake can be put right where everybody can see it was, and the whole term comes out as a file an administrator can act on.
Assignment submission and grading
Coursework handed in against a deadline: learners upload their work, anything that lands after the date is marked late rather than turned away, a tutor can give one person longer without moving it for the class, and the mark comes back with written feedback attached to the attempt it was about.
Study group finder
Learners studying the same thing say which hours they are free in an ordinary week. The product finds the stretches where enough of them are free at once, ranks them by how many people each one suits, and lets a group form around a window instead of around a time one person picked.
Build flashcards with spaced repetition.
Start your free week. Adaeze runs your kickoff, and Lars reviews every pull request.