Hot Potatoes

To download Hot Potatoes:

http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/

Version 5.2 of Hot Potatoes available

Tutorial site:

http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/wintutor/contents.htm

Introduction to Hot Potatoes

The Hot Potatoes suite is a set of six authoring tools, created by the Research and Development team at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre. They enable you to create interactive Web-based exercises of six basic types. The exercises use JavaScript for interactivity, and will work in Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer versions 4 and above on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Two of the tools, JMatch and JMix, can also produce DHTML-based drag-and-drop exercises, but these will only work with more recent browsers. The authoring tools will also handle accented characters, so you can create exercises in any language based on the Roman character set, including French, German, and many other languages.

Although the exercises are constructed using JavaScript, you don't need to know anything about JavaScript to use the programs. All you need to do is to enter your data -- texts, questions, answers etc. -- and the programs will create the Web pages for you. Then you can post them on your Web site. However, the programs are designed so that almost every aspect of the pages can be customized, so if you do know HTML or JavaScript, you can make almost any change you want to the way the exercises work or to the format of the Web pages.

If you work in a non-profit-making educational institution or context, and you are prepared to share your exercises by placing them on a publicly-accessible Web server, then you may use the Hot Potatoes suite free of charge. If you are working for a company or in a commercial context, or if you password-protect your exercises or distribute them only on an intranet, you will need to buy a licence (contact Half-Baked Software for information). However, whether you're commercial or otherwise, we do ask that you register the programs; all you have to do is to fill in a form on our Website, and it helps us to stay in touch with our users and get some idea of who is using our programs. See the help file for more information on registration.

Now go on to look at some examples of the kinds of exercises you can make using

Hot Potatoes. (Note that the data files for all of these exercises are available in the tutorial folder if you want to look at them inside the authoring programs later.)

Three steps in making an exercise

There are three main steps in creating an exercise:

1.Entering data (questions, answers and so on)

2.Configuring the output (preparing the button captions, instructions, and

other features of your Web pages)

3.Creating Web pages (compiling your exercise into HTML or DHTML pages).

Step 1: Entering Data

The first stage is to enter the questions and answers for your exercise.

Start the jquiz program, then enter the title.

Once you have entered your data, you need to save it, in case you want to change it later.

Each of the Hot Potatoes programs saves data in its own special file type;

in JQuiz, the files end with the ".jqz" extension. It is important to save your data, since the programs cannot reload Web pages to make changes; the only way to change your Web pages is to reload the data file, make your changes, and then regenerate the Web pages.

Call your file "test", or something similar. Then the file name "...\test.jqz" should appear in the caption of the JQuiz program.

Step 2: Configuring the Output

When a Hot Potatoes program creates Web pages, it does so by combining 3 resources:

1.The data you entered

2.The configuration information

3.A set of "source files", or templates, containing the page structure.

We have already looked at data; the next step is Configuration.

The configuration information is a collection of pieces of text, including instructions for doing the exercise, button captions, and link URLs, which are unlikely to change much from one exercise to another. For example, all of the sample exercises you looked at earlier in this presentation included a button labelled "Check", so that the student could check his or her answer. The caption "Check" is not likely to change from exercise to exercise, so it does not need to be stored with the data; however, you may need to change it (if you are creating quizzes in another language, for example).

You can get access to all the configuration information by choosing "Configure Output"

from the Options menu. We're going to make two changes to the configuration; first of all,

we're going to change the caption of one of the buttons, from "Hint" to "Give me a hint".

When you see the Configuration screen, click on the "Buttons" tab, and change the entry for

the Hint button, as you see below:

Next, we're going to change one setting on another page of the Configuration screen. If you

click on the Other tab, you'll see a check box for making the exercise case-sensitive. You'll

remember that our two correct answers were "six" and "6"; however, it would be sensible to

accept "Six" or "SIX" too, so we're going to uncheck that box (it may be unchecked already; in that case, just leave it alone). Then the exercise will not be case-sensitive, and all of these variations of "six" will be accepted:

Step 3: Creating a Web Page

The final step is to create a Web page from your data. All you need to do is click

on "Export to Web" from the File menu, then give your page a filename. Use the filename "test.htm".

The program will tell you that it has produced a file, and let you view it in your

browser. (Note that the single-file output is an improvement over previous versions of Hot Potatoes, when three or more files would be produced for each exercise.) All you have to do now is upload that file to your Website, and you have a working exercise.

A Quick Recap

You've just worked through the three basic steps in making an exercise. Now you can

put the three files you made on a Web server, and anyone can access your exercise. Alternatively, you can install them on a floppy disk or a local hard drive if you don't have access to a server.

For further information...

This brief tutorial should have enabled you to make a start on creating your own

exercises right now. However, there is a lot more to learn if you really want to get the most out of Hot Potatoes. The online context-sensitive help should answer most of your questions as you begin to experiment. (Press F1 to access the Help file, or use the Help menu.) Each program has a range of different configuration options, so take the time to look through them all. You'll find that all of these things can be configured:

Background graphic

Page colours

Hint, Clue and Navigation buttons

Button captions

Exercise subtitles and instructions

Case-sensitivity

...and more...

The Hot Potatoes suite supports the use of accented characters, so you can set up your configuration in any language using the Roman character set (such as French, German, Danish, Dutch and many others). The programs include tools for inserting graphics and links into your pages, and you can also insert sound and video -- see the Help file for more information on this. If you get really ambitious, you can even edit the source files used as templates to create the exercises, changing the whole appearance and even the functionality of the Web pages you produce.

Exercises available through Hot Potatoes

Multiple-Choice Quiz made with JBC

This is a typical JBC quiz. In this window, there is a reading text. The reading text may be entered directly into the JBC program by choosing File/Add Reading Text, or it may be an external HTML file that you created in some other way (you can import a file from the Add Reading Text screen). Alternatively, you may choose not to include a reading text at all. All of the Hot Potatoes applications allow you to include a reading text.

This reading text also has a timer running. This is also optional. When the full time has elapsed, the reading text will disappear (although the user will be able to get it back by pressing a button which appears). If you do include a timer, you can choose the number of minutes before the text disappears.

On the other side of the screen, there are two frames. The top frame is the Welcome/Help frame. This frame includes some navigation buttons (see below). It is also used to display the feedback the user will see after pressing one of the answer buttons.

The bottom frame on the other side contains the questions. If you don't include a reading text, the two frames on the other side take up all of the browser window. At the bottom of the question frame, you will see three navigation buttons. These are optional, but they can be very useful in helping your users to navigate around a large site or work through a sequence of exercises (as in this Web site). One button is a "back" button, taking you back to wherever you came from, one takes you to an index or contents page, and the other takes you on to the next exercise or page in a sequence.

Another Multiple-Choice Quiz made with JBC

This exercise demonstrates some other features of the JBC multiple-choice output. Note that the questions are displayed one by one. Also, the order of questions and answers is jumbled each time you load the page. Note also that this page displays a random selection of three questions out of a total of six -- the questions you see will change each time you reload the page. Finally, look out for a slightly different question type, which requires that you select ALL of the possible correct answers before checking your choice. This is new in Hot Potatoes 5.

A Gap-Fill Exercise made with JCloze

A Text-Entry Exercise made with JQuiz

A Crossword made with JCross

A Jumbled-Sentence Exercise made with JMix

A Jumbled-Word Exercise made with JMix (DHTML)

An Ordering Exercise made with JMatch

A Matching Exercise made with JMatch (DHTML)

Make your first exercise

Now that you've seen all the exercises at work, it's time to try creating your own exercise.

We're willing to bet that you can do it in two minutes flat, using JMix. Here's what you do:

Start the JMix program, then

1.Enter a title.

2.Enter a sentence. Break your sentence into segments, by putting each segment on

a separate line.

3.Click on the Web button, or choose "Export to Web" from the File menu. (If you

have a version 5 Web browser or above, you might want to choose the Web drag button

next to it instead, to get a drag-and-drop version of the page.)

4.Answer the question about "This" with "no".

5.Choose a name for your Web page.

6.Answer "Yes" to view the exercise in your browser.

When you develop exercises using Hot Potatoes

Start the JMix program, then:

1. The first stage is to enter the questions and answers for your exercise.

Start the jquiz program, then enter the title.

Enter a sentence. Break your sentence into segments, by putting each segment on

a separate line.

2. Once you have entered your data, you need to save it, in case you want to change it later.

Each of the Hot Potatoes programs saves data in its own special file type;

in JQuiz, the files end with the ".jqz" extension. It is important to save your data, since the programs cannot reload Web pages to make changes; the only way to change your Web pages is to reload the data file, make your changes, and then regenerate the Web pages.

Call your file "test", or something similar. Then the file name "...\test.jqz" should appear in the caption of the JQuiz program.

3. Answer "Yes" to view the exercise in your browser.

4. The final step is to create a Web page from your data. All you need to do is click

on "Export to Web" from the File menu, then give your page a filename. Use the filename "test.htm".

(If you have a version 5 Web browser or above, you might want to choose the Web drag button next to it instead, to get a drag-and-drop version of the page.)