Personal ICT Skills 9 Using Hot Potatoes TM Alan Jervis Torben Steeg School of Education The University of Manchester Sixth Edition November 2006
Personal ICT Skills 2006
2006 The University of Manchester All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the School of Education, The University of Manchester. All of the booklets in this series may be downloaded from: http://www.learn2teach.org.uk 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education
Personal ICT Skills 2006
READ.ME (Introduction) This series of booklets is intended to support you in acquiring and developing the ICT skills which are needed for your course and for the QTS Skills Test. It concentrates on personal competence - the individual ICT skills which professionals need for their personal use. It contains reference material, additional information, and practice exercises. This Series consists of: Book 1 is a getting started guide which covers the basic use of a computer (the operating system ) plus sections on using e-mail and the World-Wide Web. Book 2 covers the use of word processors, particularly Microsoft Word. Book 3 covers the use of graphics and images. Book 4 covers the use of desk-top publishing, particularly Microsoft Publisher. Book 5 covers the use of spreadsheets, particularly Microsoft Excel. Book 6 covers the use of databases, particularly Microsoft Access. Book 7 covers the use of presentation graphics, particularly Microsoft PowerPoint. Book 8 covers writing Web pages. Book 9 covers the use of the Hot Potatoes test and quiz generating package. A number of symbols are used at various points: marks information which you need to be careful about; it may also indicate something to check if you haven t read the instructions and things seem to have gone wrong! marks a link or reference to some other part of this book or booklet in the series; marks more advanced information which you may not need at once; marks features of an application which are not covered in this book: you should ask a member of staff about them, or read the manual or on-line help system if you need to use them. This book is written and produced within the School of Education. We have tried to make it as comprehensible, complete, logical, helpful and encouraging as we can. If you have any comments or suggestions for its improvement, we will be pleased to receive them for incorporation into future editions. Alan Jervis alan.jervis@manchester.ac.uk Torben Steeg torben.steeg@manchester.ac.uk 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 1
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Hot Potatoes HOT POTATOES is a suite of six programs for creating interactive educational exercises for placing on web pages. Book 9 Hot Potatoes Introduction The suite is freely downloadable from http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ The programs are: JQuiz multiple-choice, true-false, text-entry or short-answer quizzes JCloze gap-fill exercises JCross crosswords JMix jumbled-sentence exercises JMatch matching and ordering exercises Masher a tool for managing sites containing many Hot Potatoes exercises The exercises are created using JavaScript and HTML, but you don t need to know JavaScript or HTML in order to use them; you simply enter the data (questions, answers etc.) and the programs will create the underlying code for the web pages automatically. These notes are based on version 6 of the suite. You should note that the output from version 6 will work only in Internet Explorer 6+, Mozilla 1.2+ and Netscape 7+. The HOT POTATOES suite is distributed as shareware. If you are a non-profit-making state-funded educational institution, and you post all materials made with Hot Potatoes on a public Web site where everyone can use them freely, then you may use Hot Potatoes free of charge. You will need to buy a commercial licence if you are not in compliance with these conditions. Information on commercial licensing is available at: http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/hotpot/licence.htm Copyright laws apply to both commercial and freeware software, and the copyright holder retains all rights. You may distribute HOT POTATOES to other users free of charge, PROVIDING THAT YOU PASS ON THE WHOLE SUITE IN ITS ORIGINAL ARCHIVE FORM, DO NOT ADD OR REMOVE ANY FILES FROM THE ARCHIVE, AND DO NOT MAKE ANY CHARGE FOR IT, AND THAT YOU OBTAIN THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA AND HALF-BAKED SOFTWARE FIRST. We do not usually give permission for distribution online or on CD-ROM. Licence for use The files created by the suite can be automatically uploaded to the www.hotpotatoes.net hosting service. This service is not free; but you can create a demo account to test out the features. If you want your pages to remain on the server for more than a couple of days, you will have to purchase an account. This account is not related to licensing for Hot Potatoes. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 3
Book 9 Hot Potatoes Starting When Hot Potatoes is started a window opens providing direct access to the five programs that create exercises and The Masher. Within the window the mouse pointer changes to a hand holding a potato and as it passes over the various options they are highlighted (note that the highlighting is not evident in this grey-scaled image): A full tutorial accompanies the suite. This is available from the Help menu of the main window and runs in a browser. If you have installed Hot Potatoes yourself, you will need to register the programs in order to unlock all the features of the suite. You can register directly from the home page at: The notes on the following pages are intended to get you started with each element of the suite; you will need to spend some time exploring and working with each program to discover its full capabilities. http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/ Just click on "Register". You will get your code instantly (by email), and go into the database of users. To register, start one of the potatoes, click on "Register" on the Help menu, and enter your user name and key. 4 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes Book 9 JQuiz is used to create four different types of question: multiplechoice, short-answer, hybrid (a short-answer question that turns into a multiple-choice question after several attempts), and multiselect (in which the user has to choose several of a set of options, then check the choices). JQuiz In multiple-choice questions, the user chooses an answer by clicking on a button. If the answer is correct, the button caption will change to a smiley face :-), and if it's wrong, it will change to an X (you can configure these bits of text). In either case, the user will see feedback specific to that answer, explaining why it's right or wrong. If the answer is wrong, the user can continue choosing answers until a correct answer is selected. The score for each question is based on the number of tries taken to get a correct answer. Once a correct answer is chosen, the scoring is "frozen", but the user can still click on buttons to see the feedback for other answers without penalty. In short-answer questions, the user has to type the answer into a text box on the page, and press a Check button to see if it is correct. The page will try to match the user's answer to a list of correct or incorrect answers you have defined. If a match is found, the feedback for that answer will be shown. If not, then the page will try to find the nearest match among the specified correct answers, and signal to the user which parts of their answer are right and which parts are wrong. The score for each question is based on the number of attempts the user makes before getting a correct answer. You can include a Hint button, which will give the user one letter of the answer; using hints incurs a score penalty. A hybrid question is a combination of a multiple-choice question and a short-answer question. Here the user is first presented with a text box and asked to type the answer. If the user fails to get the answer right after a specified number of tries (which you can choose), the question changes to a multiple-choice question to make it easier. When you are creating a hybrid question, you'll see an extra checkbox on the right: Include in MC options. Tick this box for any answer you want to appear as part of the multiple-choice answers in the second phase of the question. For example, your short-answer question may include four predicted correct answers which would be acceptable, but you probably only want to include one of them as a multiple-choice option. A multi-select question asks the student to select several of a specific set of items. The idea here is that the student must select all the correct items, and not select any wrong items. This might take the format "Which of the following are nouns?", followed by a list of words. The student must check all the nouns, but not check any answers which are not nouns, then press a Check button. If the answer is not completely correct, the student will see a readout of the number of correct choices, and one piece of feedback. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 5
Book 9 Setting up a quiz Hot Potatoes When you first run JQuiz you may be asked whether you want to start in Beginner or Advanced mode; select Beginner for now. Click here for further answers If you are not asked the question you can ensure that you are in Beginner mode by selecting Mode from the Options menu. Click here for next question JQuiz opens straight into its main working window: Write your quiz title here Write your question here Select the type of question here To create questions you simply type into the text boxes. Start by giving your quiz a title (see image above). Next, for each question, write in the question, the possible answers and the feedback to be given for each answer. You need at least two possible answers; if you don t use C and D they will be ignored. You can have as many answers as you wish. Finally, indicate which answer is correct. 6 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes Book 9 The only visible difference when you select a different question types is in the Settings Column. The options for Multiple-choice are shown above and are identical for Short-Answer. The other options are shown below: The Manage Questions menu provides a number of useful tools including the deletion of questions and rearrangement of their order. You can also shuffle answers within a question. You can mix question types within the same quiz. That is, you can, say, have a mixture of multiple choice and short answer questions within the same quiz. Simply select the question type you want for each question. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 7
Book 9 Some more advanced question options Hot Potatoes There are three routes to more sophisticated question design. The INSERT menu allows you to add pictures and a range of HTML objects to your questions. Configure Output under the Options Menu includes options such as a question timer. The Advanced mode allows you to control the weightings given to each question and each answer within the question. Publishing a quiz When you have completed the setting up of your quiz you can publish it as a web page. Click the Export to a v6web page icon. This opens a standard Save dialogue asking you where you wish to save the HTML file. After clicking Save you will be offered some options: To take these in reverse order, Nothing does literally that; it saves the fie and then returns you to JQuiz to continue working. The Upload option requires you first to have set up an account with the www.hotpotatoes.net website. If you have no other way to publish your Hot Potatoes files, this is an effective way to do so. See the website for details of how to go about this. Finally, View the exercise in my Browser does exactly what it says and the result will be similar to that shown opposite. 8 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes Book 9 This web page can be included on your own website or used on a local network or individual computer by simply opening the file within a modern browser. Clicking an answer brings up a feedback pop-up; on the right is shown the feedback for a correct answer selected the first time - hence a score of 100%. With four possible responses (as above) the scoring is as follows: Correct first time 100% Correct second time 66% Correct third time 33% Correct fourth time 0% Full control over the appearance of the web page created by JQuiz is available through Configure Output under the Options Menu. The font used can also be chosen through this menu. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 9
Book 9 Hot Potatoes JCloze A cloze procedure is a "fill-in-the-blanks" activity where the learner uses clues from the context to supply words that have been deliberately removed from the text. Thus a cloze procedure is a test of reading comprehension. Cloze is also known as a fill in the blanks activity. JCloze lets you easily prepare Cloze activities as web pages. The main working window is shown below: Text for clozing can either typed straight into the main area of the window or pasted in from elsewhere. There is a spell checking facility. The Title box provides the title for the whole web page. Once there is text in the box, gaps can be created either individually, by selecting a word or phrase and then the Gap button, or by using the Auto-gap button which places a gap every n th word. Gapped words remain visible but highlighted in this window. Gaps can be removed by clicking within some gapped text and then clicking the Delete Gap button. All gaps can be removed with the Clear Gaps button. 10 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes Book 9 When a highlighted word is gapped a dialogue opens allowing clues and alternative acceptable words to be provided. This dialogue can be opened at any time for any gap by clicking in the gap and then on the Show Words button. A completed Cloze exercise is shown below. Here every 6 th word has been gapped; this has resulted in some unfortunate choices for gaps including a date and proper names. Using the Font option the Comic Sans font has been chosen which effects not only the above view of the exercise but also the resulting web page shown overleaf. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 11
Book 9 Hot Potatoes You can see that on the web page the length of each hidden word has been obscured by the use of a minimum standard size box to write into. Clicking a? button reveals the hint provided in the alternative words dialogue (see previous page). At the foot of the page are the Check and Hint buttons referred to in the page introduction. 12 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes As with JQuiz it is possible to add pictures and a range of HTML objects to your questions, to include a question timer and to control the style of the created web page. Within the configuration dialogue there are some further options including: Book 9 Some more advanced cloze options Use dropdown list instead of textbox in output. If you choose this, the following will happen: 1. Instead of text boxes, each gap will show as a dropdown list, consisting of a list of all the gapped words in the exercise. 2. The hint button will not be shown (because there's no need for hints if the words are all shown in the list). Include word list with text. This allows you to include a list of the gapped words from the text, mixed up, in a box at the top of the page, to make the exercise a little easier. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 13
Book 9 Hot Potatoes JCross JCross allows you to create web based crosswords as an assessment tool. JCross opens showing a 20 by 20 blank grid: If you haven t registered Hot Potatoes, you will be restricted to an 8 by 8 grid. If you want a larger grid you can change the grid size through the Manage Grid menu. If you only use a part of the grid the unused rows and columns will be discarded when the web page is created. There are two ways to establish a grid of words; you can either add them to the grid yourself or give JCross a list of words to fit into a grid. If you enter the words directly onto the grid note that you have to move to a new square, using the arrow keys, before typing each letter. The clues are added subsequently through the Add Clues button. 14 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes Book 9 Creating the grid and clues by hand Alternatively, using the Automatic Grid Maker from the Manage Grid menu, you can provide JCross with a list of answers and clues from which it will then attempt to make a grid. The answers are separated from the clues by a pair of colons. Clicking Make the grid creates a grid of the provided words; this is a dynamic process that, for a complex grid, can be observed in process. It can also be stopped by clicking the Stop now button. A resulting web page is shown overleaf. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 15
Book 9 Hot Potatoes Some more advanced crossword options As with the other Hot Potatoes applications, it is possible to add pictures and HTML links to your questions, to include a question timer and to control the style of the created web page. 16 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes Book 9 JMix jumbles up a provided sentence to create an exercise where the user is asked to recreate the sentence. JMix The main window provides space for the sentence showing the sentence segments and alternate sentences that are legitimate. Note in the above that punctuation marks are included as separate segments of the jumbled sentence. You can also break up one word into individual letters, to create a mixed-up word puzzle. As with the other Hot Potatoes applications, it is possible to add pictures and HTML links to your sentence, to include a question timer and to control the style of the created web page. One use of pictures in this application would be to create a drag-and-drop output page which uses pictures instead of words. JMix offers two output possibilities; one where the sentence is constructed by clicking on the segments in the correct order and one where it is constructed by clicking and dragging the segments. The web pages resulting from the window above are shown overleaf. It is not possible for the program to tell whether a single quotation mark ( ' ) is being used as an apostrophe or as a quotation marker. The single quotation is therefore always treated as an apostrophe; if you want to use quotation marks, use the double quotation ( " ). Angle brackets ( < and > ) should be avoided as they cause confusion with HTML tags. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 17
Book 9 Hot Potatoes Click the words in the correct order to create the sentence Drag the words into the correct order to create the sentence 18 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes Book 9 JMatch allows you to create matching and ordering exercises. In the main window there are two columns; the left hand one contains items that will remain in the same order on the final web page, the right hand column contains items matching items that will be jumbled in the final web page. The Fix column allows you to prevent a pair of items from being jumbled. JMatch In this example the left hand column contains links to images of the items named in the right hand column (though, as with the other applications in the suite, ordinary text is perfectly acceptable here). As with JMix, JMatch offers two output possibilities; one where the match options are chosen from a drop down list and one where they are dragged into the correct position. In the first of these pictures are permitted only in the left hand column (since they can t appear in a drop down textual list). In the drag-anddrop approach pictures can be placed in the right hand column as well, or instead. As you can see in the image above, the links to the pictures consist of HTML. Do not be alarmed. All you need to do is click Insert > Picture > Picture from Local File and navigate to the image you want to use. JMatch then creates this code. In a similar way it is possible to insert images from web pages. The Default item at the foot of the right hand column is the text that is visible in the drop down list before a choice has been made. The web pages resulting from the window above are shown overleaf. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 19
Book 9 Hot Potatoes Select items from a drop down list to match the item drag answers into place to match the item 20 Personal ICT Skills 2006
Hot Potatoes The Masher is a tool for automatically compiling batches of Hot Potatoes exercises into units. You might have five Hot Potatoes exercises that form a single unit of materials. You want to build HTML files from all the exercises, with the same colours and appearance settings; you also want to link the exercises together using the navigation buttons, and create an index file for the unit. The Masher will do that for you. This is what you do: The Masher Book 9 To make use of the masher you need to have some competence and confidence in web page creation. See Chapter 11. 1. Add the Hot Potatoes files you want to include in the unit into the main screen Files box. Each time you add a file you will see a dialogue box in which you can set the output (*.htm) file name and choose either standard or drag-and-drop web pages. 2. The arrow buttons on the right allow you to order sequence of exercises. 3. Specify the Output folder for your unit. If you leave this blank, the program will use the folder in which the first page or exercise is located. 4. Set the appropriate appearance options on the Appearance tab. 2006 Alan Jervis and Torben Steeg - The University of Manchester School of Education 21
Book 9 Hot Potatoes 5. Select the Navigation buttons and their captions on the Buttons tab. 6. On the Index tab, set a title for the index page. 7. Click on Build unit. The Masher processes each file in turn, by launching the appropriate Hot Potato, loading the file into it, setting the configuration data, and compiling the Web page. When all the Web pages are compiled, the program creates an index page for the entire unit. You can then view the index page, and test the exercises. The Masher can also be used to upload files to a hotpotatoes.net account. Note that without a (purchased) licence for The Masher (which is distinct from the licence for the rest of the suite) it will only process three files at a time. 22 Personal ICT Skills 2006