Dr.
H. Werner Hess
Hong Kong Baptist University
Dept. of Government and International Studies
Using the Hot Potatoes is actually quite easy, as you will see. All six authoring tools have a similar structure and layout.
In this introduction, we will use pictures by Vincent van Gogh as a stimulus to create some simple exercises.
Please open the following Web site first: CGFA A Virtual Art Museum. Search for "Gogh, Vincent van" in the Artists Index and then the painting "The Bedroom at Arles"
"The Bedroom at Arles" is a well-known painting of 1887, today in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It is often used for teaching purposes (e.g. for introducing colors, spatial relations, as an initial conversation stimulus).
The opening screen looks like this:
Click on the potato "JMatch". Your screen should look like this:
Enter a title for the exercise, e.g. "Vincent van Gogh's Furniture" / "Vincent van Gogh und seine Möbel".
The simplest form of a vocabulary exercise
would be to list native language terms in one column, L2 terms in the
other.
However, you can also make it more difficult by paraphrasing a term in one
of the columns.
Here we try both forms in one exercise (which is not a sound practice but will do for demonstration purposes).
Van Gogh's room is furnished just with basic furniture:
- bed
- chair
- table
- mirror
- picture
Enter the first three words in English one by one in the left column.
Now think of a way to paraphrase "mirror" and "picture", e.g.
- It hangs on the wall between door and window.
- It hangs on the wall above the bed.
Enter these two sentences (or similar ones) in the left-hand-column as well.
Now you have to enter equivalents in the right-hand column. For the purpose of this demonstration, we use French.
Since one of the difficulties in French is gender, we use articles as well:
- le lit
- la chaise
- la table
- le miroir
- la peinture
Your screen should now look like this:
Now you have to configure the exercise. Click on the configuration button (second row, 6th button from the left).
A screen appears, which lets you give a subtitle to your exercise. You can ignore it at this point.
Under "Instructions", please type "Find the matching pairs" (or something similar). You may also use the default sentence(s) already provided by Hot Potatoes.
In the same screen, click on "Prompts/Feedback". Leave the default instructions or enter similar phrases of your own choice. This is the feedback, the students will later receive from you (i.e. the program)
In the same screen, click on "Buttons". Buttons let students go back to a cover page or proceed to another exercise.
Since this is the first exercise we create, we only have a cover page: "lesson1.htm". Therefore,
- Uncheck "Include Next ..." by clicking on it.
- Leave "Include Go to Contents Button" checked and enter "Back" in the field to its right (if it is not already there).
- Under "Contents Page URL", you have to tell the program where it should go back to. This is simply lesson1.htm
Your screen should look like this:
With "Appearance" you can change the layout of the exercise (color, font).
Click on "Appearance" and then the rainbow symbols. Select a color scheme you like.
Ignore "Reading", "Other" and "CGI". We don't need these now.
Now SAVE and then click "Ok". Hot Potatoes has now saved your configuration (and will maintain it for further JMatch exercises unless ou re-configure).
It's time now to SAVE your exercise.
Click
on File/Save as .. in the main screen menu (or the corresponding icon).
You will see that the JMatch exercise automatically has the extension *.jmt
Delete the asterisk (*) and enter a file name for the exercise, e.g. "vangogh1.
Save the file in you desktop folder (zheda1).
The file vangogh1.jmt is the program file. To let your students do the exercise, Hot Pot creates another Web page file (the "cover" page). To create this file, click on the icon with the little spider net and the number "5".
There are two such icons in the menu bar. The left one will create two columns of vocabulary items (just as you have created them before). The right one will place the items of the right column in boxes, which students then have to drag to the correct left-hand item. Choose the one you like best and click on the spider net icon.
JMatch now asks you for a name for the Web page file (*.htm extension). Use the same name as for the program file - hence save the Web page as vangogh1.htm.
Hot Potatoes now asks you whether you want to see your exercise. Click "Yes". There you are!
You can now play with your own exercise and see whether it works.
It should lead you/the student back to the Lesson 1 overview page.
If so, you will now see that you still need to place a referring link to "vangogh1.htm" on this overview page.
Open the file "lesson1.htm" in Word or Frontpage.
Write the title of your exercise, mark (highlight) it and hyperlink it with "vangogh1.htm". Save again.
Then return to your exercise. If done properly, the "Back" button now leads to the revised overview page - from where you can click-jump to your exercise again.