Tuesday, August 13

This was Naa’s second day of school, and Auo’s first. Sunshine left first, Naa went second and Auo and I went third. It had been raining hard in the night and looked likely to rain again.

I spent the morning extending my knowledge of the correct use of flashcards, and working out techniques for using them in class so that they can end up on tablets and phones. My preference for iPads and iPhones is Brainwave, and so I created three sets of cards for learning Swedish, and imported them. I made one myself, full of Arcada-style nouns, and compiled the other two from flashcards that I exported from Cram.

I also looked at Memrise, which seemed somewhat more complex, although it has the advantage of having both iOS and Android apps. Finally I looked at Flashcards To Go, which is cross-platform, has a free one-deck-at-a-time version and a $4 full version for both iOS and Android. This lets you import decks, but in my brief explorations it had trouble with Nordic letters where Brainwave didn’t.

After lunch I looked in more detail at Lumosity, and wondered whether to try to enroll in their research programs. I also phoned Auo to ask how her new teacher, Ann-Mari, had been. She seems to have read the same books as I have been reading. She began with an hour making contracts with them and outlining the house rules. The process sounded more like negotiation than enforcement.

While I did this a heavy rain pounded down outside in a repeat of yesterday. When I stopped I decided to go for a short walk. The dull overcast sky is now bright blue. I stroll outside and stop to photograph the tree whose annual progress I seem to have fallen into monitoring.

When I return I will begin going through the material from a summer’s worth of writing, in an effort to get it into a shape that I can show Stefan. In passing I will purchase Scrivener, the software I have been using as a trial version all summer.