Hot Potatoes: No ordinary Vegetable
17:31Hot Potatoes has been around for quite a while in the field of educational technology. Yes, the design is a little archaic and drab, but that just goes to show that its functions and user-friendliness withstand the test of time. If you're looking to generate quizzes and all sorts of exercises, ranging from cloze, matching, to crossword on a computer program without having to go online, Hot Potatoes is your perfect match.
What can I do on Hot Potatoes?
You need to install Hot Potatoes on your PC first, so head down over to the main page and select the installer most appropriate to your device (either Windows, Vista, Linux or Mac).Types of HotPot exercises:
- JCloze: the typical gap-filling exercise both for reading or listening. You can embed a reading text, audio or video and blank out several key phrases in the summary (or transcript) to practice comprehension.
- JQuiz: you can you have an array of question types, from multiple choice, short answers and multi-select answers for learners to improve gist and detailed reading or listening.
- JCross: this is extremely easy to use. You only need to type in the words for answers, and HotPot will arrange them into grids.
- JMatch: a matching (drag-drop) exercise or drop-down menu type of exercise, perfect for vocabulary or story ordering.
- JMix: this is the conventional jumble exercise handy for sentence formation practice (rearranging words to form sentences), text-reconstruction or spelling; not limited to dictation where learners listen to an audio and arrange the words based on what they hear.
Important points to remember
One important thing you need to remember about Hot Potatoes is that whatever activity you make, it will be saved as 2 files: the editable file (for example, crosswords have a .jcw filetype) and the webpage (.htm). How do you save HotPots? Once you're done with creating the activities:- Windows users : click File - Create webpage - Open in my browser
- Mac users: click File - Export - Export as a standard webpage
Although your students will only need to open the .htm file, it's best if you keep both the HotPot file and webpage in one folder, along with the images, audio or video that you'd like to embed into the activity, and send the whole compressed folder to your students. In this case, inside the folder, you would also need to include a flash media player, which you can get here. Another alternative is to embed a Youtube video - you don't need any external plug-ins, but students need to be online to view it.
Classroom Application
I particularly like JMatch, so in this post, I'll be talking more about it. Not to worry though; you can find heaps of comprehensive tutorials here for the other exercise types.Jmatch for Listening Exercise
For a simple matching exercise, you will see two columns where you'll put down the correct pairs. For example, my story sequencing exercise about the history of Saint Patrick's Day will have only ordinal numbers in the left column and the correct story order in the right (see picture below).
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| JMatch's work template is quite grey-looking but self-explanatory. |
Don't forget to put in the exercise title, and for added instructions, you can go to the Options tab - Open Configuration Window - Instructions. You can even change the aesthetics (background colour, font face, etc.) and add a timer to limit the time students can work on the exercise. If you wish to match words to picture, or audio to pictures, you can also embed an image within the columns. Just click on Insert tab - Insert Image - find the path to your file, and manipulate its size. Remember to use free copyright images from Pixabay or Morguefile. For audio, you can upload the .mp3 to Dropbox and insert a URL through Insert link to file.
Embedding YouTube Videos
If you'd like to insert a video from Youtube as the input for your exercise, click on the little Book icon under the tabs at the top of the window. You will see a pop-up like the picture below. Check the Include Reading with exercise button, type in a short title, and paste the HTML codes from the YouTube video on the Reading text space.
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| Click on the Book Icon (fifth from the left) to embed a reading passage or YouTube videos. |
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| To embed a reading passage, simply copy-paste the text into the space under Reading Text. For YouTube videos, copy-paste the HTML codes. |
Once you're happy with the content, go ahead and Save the Hot Potato file and export it as a separate webpage. I'm not sure if this applies to Windows users, but you have several choices of exporting the activity:
- For a drag-drop exercise, click File - Export - Create drag-drop page. This type of exercise lets students drag pictures or words to its correct pair.
- For drop-down menu answers, click File - Export - Create Standard V6 page.
My Saint Patrick's Day JMatch
Students watch a video about the History of St. Patrick's Day and restructure the events chronologically. Because YouTube is used, the video in this particular HotPot cannot be run offline.
Note:
For JMatch, click on the Pattyfix.htm file; there is a crossword task also if you want to check it out.
Any limitations?
Hot Potatoes can be categorised as a Structural CALL, that uses computers as modes for transferring the material because of its capability to facilitate drilling/ repetition and individual learners' learning pace. If you compare it to Communicative and Integrative CALL that promote meaningful interaction and student collaboration to create actual digital products (like blog posts, podcasts), Hot Potatoes may fall short on the pedagogical benefits in language acquisition.
On top of that, to my observation, because you can't keep records of learners' quiz scores or progress on other HotPot activities, this tool is preferably used for practice, not for individual assessment. Students' scores will be visible to the students themselves, but you won't be able to archive them. With this, integrating HotPots to a flipped classroom material set would be far more effective, as the goal is self-reflection of how the student is processing input or how they are generally managing in the lesson.
Another drawback is that HotPot gets slightly code-y and requires additional software if you want to get creative and vary the exercise interface. For example, you might need to research a bit on how to work with Flash plug-ins to play .swf audio. There are tutorials on these "hacking" procedures as they call it, but at times teachers just prefer a straightforward yet eye-catching program to arouse interest and motivation. Blendspace does have similar quiz features plus a more attractive look, but HotPot takes the trophy for having more question varieties.
Regardless of its shortcomings, Hot Potatoes is not to be underestimated. Like real vegetables, for most people (especially me), you have to make an effort to mask their bitter and bland taste. The same goes for Hot Potatoes, you've got to see beyond their plain-looking exterior and unleash your creativity to reap its nutrition.
Regardless of its shortcomings, Hot Potatoes is not to be underestimated. Like real vegetables, for most people (especially me), you have to make an effort to mask their bitter and bland taste. The same goes for Hot Potatoes, you've got to see beyond their plain-looking exterior and unleash your creativity to reap its nutrition.
2 comments
Hi Priska, your blog post is so professional! I really enjoyed reading it, and it's well organized in a format that I find it easy to follow but informative at the same time! Well done! :)
ReplyDeleteHi Priska,
ReplyDeleteI think you are definitely right about the shortcomings. The main reasons why I didn't introduce Hot potato is that the interface is rather plain as well as boring and it is quite complicated to use for me to use on my pc.