PocketTorah vs SmartHebrewFlashcards

PocketTorah is designed to help you learn the weekly Torah and Haftarah portion anywhere, at any time for free. This project was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund The app includes: - The entire text of the Torah and Haftarah in Hebrew and translation. - On Demand Audio: With a simple click or touch of any verse number the corresponding Hebrew with proper trope is chanted, while the corresponding text is highlighted. - Tikkun View – With a touch you can choose whether you want to see the Hebrew as vowelized text or as it appears in the Torah with crowns and without vowels.

Smart Hebrew Flashcards is an app written by an experienced Sunday School Hebrew Teacher to make learning Hebrew more fun for all students. It’s great to use on-line – just share screen and just ask students to take turns guessing a flashcard. Smart Hebrew Flashcards is perfect for the prospective bar or bat mitzvah student and anyone who wants to easily improve their Hebrew reading and vocabulary. What’s great about it? You can learn common Hebrew words. It includes Hebrew prayers and holiday words that are hard to find in other apps -- and are much needed by Sunday School teachers preparing bar and bat mitzvah students! No setup required for Hebrew Teachers -- just ask students to install and you are off and running. Just finished testing for three years on a group of 4th graders that all are well into their Bar/Bat Mitzvah Prep now. The entire religious service makes more sense if one knows the Hebrew that is being spoken. This app teaches the words that form the foundation of many prayers, so it fosters a meaningful connection with previous generations. Kids love it so much that a group of 5th grade Sunday School students came to an extra class every Tuesday evening for six months to play the game and help develop it. “Smart Hebrew Flashcards” are “Smart” because the Progress screen shows exactly how students are doing on particular words, and perhaps more importantly, how much time they spend on a particular word. Teachers need to know that to plan what to focus on. Bar/Bat Mitzvah students get a head start by learning some Biblical Hebrew. The app is really a mitzvah – a good deed. The app will be free. How did it develop? During five years of teaching Hebrew, the App’s creator discovered that students LOVED flash cards more than any other part of the class. They worked well for students learning in a group or on their own. The class played a “game” by taking turns reading the words . During this past two years, the class couldn’t play a physical flashcard game, so the Sunday School teacher searched for suitable flashcard games online. But there were none that were both easy to use, and taught both Hebrew prayers and holiday words. He didn’t find a single app. So given that the Sunday School teacher is also a computer science professor, he created an app, and started teaching his Sunday School students online. The app has been used the last six months by a 5th grade class, with no extra setup by the teacher. The Director of Religious Education (who has come to numerous classes where the app has been used) says, “The Sunday School kids need to learn what the prayers and Jewish holiday words mean--and so do I! But there was nothing that suited our needs, so this one was developed. It’s been fun meeting every week to test the app. The kids don’t like to miss--and neither do I. For the last month, I have been practicing 6 days a week for 5-10 minutes, and I know a lot of words in the prayers and songs now. It’s revolutionized my whole experience of Jewish services. Oh, and it does teach a lot of other words too! I’m just a religious educator, so the prayers are what I care about most.” During the testing period, a class of 5th grade students have been relentless with software requirements. They know what an app should do, and they refused to play until the app was not only fun, but behaved as they thought it should. Their feedback has guided the entire development. Version 1 has been in the app store for a couple of years and over time it did not work on newer versions of IOS. All of that has been fixed and numerous features have been added. Enjoy and send us feedback at info@smarthebrewflashcards.com.