Microsoft Word Week 1 Hot Potatoes Software Heidi Edit docx

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HOT POTATOES
ACTIVITY-­‐MAKING SOFTWARE

Hot Potatoes is a robust set of classroom activity tools that teachers can use to construct quizzes, cloze

or matching activities, and crossword puzzles. Hot Potatoes is an open-­‐source software program that
can be downloaded
here
.
Hot Potatoes, like any technology used for the first time, can seem overwhelming. However, it only
takes a little practice to get comfortable with the basics. Once these basics are discovered, begin to try
the more advanced features shown at the end of this week’s Teacher’s Corner. Not everything needs to
be learned at once so don’t rush and don’t panic!
What makes Hot Potatoes a valuable tool in a technology toolkit is that the files created by the software
are simple .htm, or webpage, files. This means the files can be placed on computers in a lab, emailed to
and from students, added to course management systems such as Moodle, or printed out and given to
students as worksheets. Hot Potatoes can fit the realities of the classroom no matter the technology
infrastructure.
The basic layout of Hot Potatoes is enough to work in many classroom situations; however the software
can be extended far beyond its initial capabilities with audio, images, and video.
In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, we look at ways to use Hot Potatoes to make basic activities. The first
set of ideas below will offer a basic tutorial on the JQuiz feature of Hot Potatoes. Once this has been
mastered it is easy to transfer the knowledge over to the other features of Hot Potatoes such as JCloze,
and JMatch. While each creates unique activities, the design and layout of the software is the same.
After some practice with the basics of Hot Potatoes, consider adding images, audio, or video to your
activities. The second set of instructions below show how to use some simple HTML code to breathe life
into your activities through multimedia. Hot Potatoes is far more robust than what can be shown in this
tutorial, so it is important to play and experiment with all the settings. Be sure to have fun!