Hot Potatoes

Nowadays, we have a lot of interesting ICT tools; however I try to find the best options in relation to the learning process given by the teachers at the school. That is the reason for choosing this tool called "Hot potatoes".

I could not find the date of his creation, but after some research, I have fallen in love with this tool. Hot Potatoes is a robust set of classroom activity tools that teachers can use to construct quizzes, matching activities, and crossword puzzles. 

Hot Potatoes is an open-source software program that can be downloaded here.

This software suite is a set of six authoring tools that allow you to create different types of interactive quizzes.  The quizzes are viewed using a web browser. Each program can produce a different type of quiz: 

• JCloze – is used to make gap-fill or cloze exercises.

• JCross – is used to make crossword exercises. 

• JMatch – is used to create matching exercises. 

• JMix – is used to make jumble exercises. 

• JQuiz – is a tool for making question-based exercises. Each quiz can consist of an unlimited number of questions. 

I consider this tool quite difficult for our students. Nevertheless, the teacher is who are going to use this software in order to provide students with some activities. Our aim with this tool is to work on reading and a little bit of speaking.

In this entry, I am not going to provide an activity design for a specific class. On the contrary, I am going to add some interesting activities that I want to probe in my class, but you could also use them in your class if you really like them.

Firstly, I have thought about an activity related to "JQuiz" which is the tool for making question-based exercises. As an introduction, we are going to talk with our students about a theme that they have to study for an exam or project. So, we are going to do a kind of oral exam, but as a big group, without dividing our class into small groups.

After talking about the topic and doing some reflection, we are going to introduce our tool today. Moreover, we should introduce that they are not going to create school material with this tool, they are going to experiment with it by doing the exercises that we have designed previously to the class.

I have chosen "JQuiz" because you can create multiple-choice questions, so this is going to help the teacher see if the students have understood the theme well. Additionally, this is going to support the teacher in order to aim the questions of the exam or project. 

To sum up, we are going to use this tool, like Kahoot, in order to do a summary of our student's knowledge before an exam or project. Moreover, this tool is going to provide us interesting information about our students strengths and weaknesses. 

Another activity that we could do before an important event in class like a big project or an exam, is one using "JCross". With this tool, we are going to create a crossword exercise that could be interesting in order to revise some keywords.

In case we want to work on speaking, we could divide the class into pairs and give one question to each pair. After that, they have to write some questions related to the question that they have. The aim of this activity is to encourage our students to read these questions aloud without feeling embarrassed or anxious. Additionally, we are working on the reinforcement of the feeling of belonging to a group, which I consider a very important value in a class.

In conclusion, I really like this software, and I consider that it has endless possibilites for us to work with it in class. So, to all the teachers who have read this entry, I highly recommend this ICT tool. At least give it one chance, and I am sure that it is not going to disappoint you.

References

American English. (s.f). HOT POTATOES ACTIVITY-MAKING SOFTWARE. [PDF]. Extract from: Hot Potatoes

Half-Baked Software Inc. (s.f). Hot Potatoes. Extract from: Hot Potatoes download