I'll add something here, since I'm writing an application focused on language learning: Pick an area to focus on, and provide lots of automation for the user.<p>Even though my application is <i>very</i> beta, it automates a lot of the drudgery in building studylists, which differentiates my software from all the other spaced repetition systems out there. This has gotten a pretty positive response so far, and has the added advantage of being very difficult to duplicate, giving you a big competitive edge.<p>Not sure how this could be applied to subjects other than language, and doing it for language is hard enough, but that's what makes this an interesting problem. :)<p>Also, I've dug around quite a bit, and talked to a few other researchers, and have yet to find any proper studies on the effectiveness of SuperMemo algorithm itself. There are lots of testimonials, but nothing involving a control group, and so until I see some hard data, I'm going to remain a little skeptical.<p>If anybody knows of such a study (with associated data), please let me know.<p>Of course, since I'm building a learning system, this puts me in a good position to undertake such an experiment. <i>grin</i> Which I plan to do next semester, using a few hundred students' worth of Japanese classes.
Having failed a couple papers in educational theory classes for proposing vaguely similar ideas, I'll give you the standard criticism: How does this maximize the child's intrinsic motivation to learn? Which isn't the same question as 'will this be fun,' which you make the case for. But rather, will this make kids the kind of people who want to check out non-fiction books from the library on their own ten years from now.
nitpick: spacing algorithm does not "dramatically increase memory." Your memory is not so much increased. Your retention rate is what increases.<p>Another nitpick: 10 minutes a session is too short for anything of any intensity. For single sessions, 40 minutes would be better. But again there isn't a hard rule. Oh well, ideas surely are cheap.