Skip to main content

HOT POTATOES

Hot Potatoes is shareware from Half-Baked Software which is based at the University of Victoria in Canada. It is a program that allows you to make six different types of self-test exercises. These exercises can also quite easily be imported into an LMS like Moodle to be used for assessment of learning content.


Hot Potatoes was originally meant to create language exercises, and some HotPot exercises (like jumbled sentence) have little use otherwise. However, most exercises can be used for any subject.

Hot Potatoes is shareware. That means you can freely download the program from the Internet

General description of the program 

Exercises are made in two steps. First, you create the so-called ‘data file’ which has a Hot Potato XML extension (like .jcw or .jcl). This file is useless without the Hot Potatoes program but is used to edit the exercises later.  The exercises are exported to web-based exercises (which have the HTML extension .htm) which can be displayed anywhere on the Web.  Note that you CANNOT RELOAD THE WEB PAGES INTO THE PROGRAM, so it is important to save your data files.
Before creating a Hot Potato exercise, you need to think about what you want to achieve with it.  Do you want students to learn vocabulary items?  Then the gap text (JCloze) or the short answer quiz (JQuiz) are the best choices.  If you wish to test text comprehension, the multiple choice (JBC) or matching (JMatch) exercises are more suitable.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CANVA

Canva is a tool that makes it possible to design anything and publish anywhere. With its user-friendly drag and drop tool and thousands of customizable templates, over 400 million designs from more than 10 million users across 179 countries have been created with Canva so far. Canva is available in 100 languages and can be accessed in desktop browsers and mobile apps. This makes Canva accessible to practically everyone with Internet connection.

PADLET

Padlet is an application to create an online bulletin board that you can use to display information for any topic. Easily create an account and build a new board. You can add images, links, videos, and more. You can return to add more later. Installing Padlet Mini in your browser allows you to add the page you are browsing to your Padlet and gives you a shortcut to view your Padlets. Settings allow you to make your wall completely open for public contributions, completely private, or moderated by you (you approve all contributions before they show). Free accounts allow you to make 11 Padlets that include search, themes, stats, premium wallpapers, and cross-device support for uploaded videos. You can always delete an old Padlet to make a new one. This is a device-agnostic tool, available on the web but also available for free as both an Android and iOS app. Use it from any device or move between several devices and still access your work. App and web versions vary slightly. ...

EDMODO

Edmodo is an educational website that takes the ideas of a social network and refines them and makes it appropriate for a classroom. Using Edmodo, students and teachers can reach out to one another and connect by sharing ideas, problems, and helpful tips. A teacher can assign and grade work on Edmodo; students can get help from the entire class on Edmodo. It is a safe environment. There is no bullying or inappropriate content, because the teacher can see everything that is posted on Edmodo. Also parents can join the class to bring a level of transparency that is difficult to achieve without technology. All in all Edmodo is a grat companion to just about any class. You can find my edmodo post by clicking here. (it can be private…)