Google Spreadsheets + APIs = Interactive Flash Cards

Update: Google is deprecating Google Spreadsheets gadgets, as they announced in this post, so I am no longer updating or supporting them. If you're a developer, you can try Apps Script or the Spreadsheets Data API to see if you can accomplish the same thing. If you're a user, sorry, sometimes Google shuts down little used features.

For about 6 months in the Mountain View Google office, I went to a once-weekly hour-long German language class. Since I didn't have much time to really do homework outside of class, I looked for excuses to use Google APIs to give me different ways of learning German. My first attempt was a gadget that combined image search with a spreadsheet-stored German vocabulary wordlist. I liked the idea of using computer-generated hints for the words and wanted to make a more general solution for any topic/language.

So, I made the interactive flash cards gadget. Each flash card has a hint and a form of guessing, with different options for hint generation and guessing strategy. The hints can come from the spreadsheet (e.g. user-entered definitions), Google translate (any supported language pair), Google image search, or Wikipedia (*currently down). The guesses can be entered in a simple text input, selected from multiple choices, or solved in a word jumble. Hopefully, these options are diverse enough for all types of learners.

Here are steps for using the gadget:

1. Create a new spreadsheet, put a list of words in the first column, and put hints in the second column if you'd like to use that option. My sample spreadsheet has an animals wordlist:
   


2. Click on the "Insert" menu and then select "Gadget..." This presents you with various categories of gadgets to choose from (similar to the iGoogle directory). My gadget isn't yet in the gallery, so you'll need to select "Custom" and then type in the URL to the gadget:
   


3. The gadget will appear embedded in the current worksheet, and it will prompt you to select a range of data to send to the gadget. Select whatever columns you've created (either just words, or words and hints), and you should see the Range text field update with the range. If it doesn't work, you can manually type it in. Click "Apply".
   


4. The flash cards gadget is designed to take up a bit more space, so it's best to move it into its own sheet. Click the menu in the upper left of the gadget and select "Move to own sheet".
   


5. You can now play with the different hint/guess options to find your favorite. Several combinations are shown below.
   

   Image Search + Word Jumble

   
   

   Second Column + Multiple Choice

   
   

   Translation + Type-in

   
   

You can play with my sample flash cards here. One day, I hope to add the ability to track your progress in learning the flash cards content... but if you're a developer, feel free to beat me to it!

If you're a developer and want to tweak this gadget further, you can grab the code from here. It's licensed under Apache 2.0, so feel free to tweak it and use it however you'd like. (And if you've got fixes, I'm happy to patch them back in).