Hot Potatoes Information

Purpose

The purpose of the Hot Potatoes is to enable you to create interactive Web-based teaching exercises which can be delivered to any Internet-connected computer equipped with a browser. The exercises use HTML and JavaScript to implement their interactivity, but you do NOT need to know anything about these languages in order to use the programs. All you need to do is enter the data for your exercises (questions, answers, responses etc.), and press a button. The program will create the Web pages for you, and you can then upload them to your server.

Information taken from the Hot Potatoes Help files as written by

Martin Holmes, Half-Baked Software and the University of Victoria HCMC, 1998-2004.

Conditions of Use

Hot Potatoes is offered free to the educational community by the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (formerly the Language Centre), under certain conditions. Hot Potatoes is free for use by state educational institutions which are non-profit making, on the condition that the material produced using the program is freely available to anyone via the WWW. *However, you need to purchase a licence under any of the following conditions:*
	You do not work for a public sector educational establishment.
	You charge money for access to the material you make with Hot Potatoes.
	You restrict access to the material in some way. (The only exception here is if you have an account on www.hotpotatoes.net, where you ARE allowed to use password restrictions.)
	You want to use the Masher program included with the Hot Potatoes suite.
For more information on licences, and details on how to purchase one, check out our Website at: http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/hot_pot_website.php If you intend using the programs to generate more than a handful of exercises, please make sure you register. This costs you nothing -- see How to register for details.
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There are five basic programs in the Hot Potatoes suite:
	The JCross program creates crossword puzzles which can be completed online. You can use a grid of virtually any size. As in JQuiz and JCloze, a hint button allows the student to request a free letter if help is needed.
	The JCloze program creates gap-fill exercises. Unlimited correct answers can be specified for each gap, and the student can ask for a hint and see a letter of the correct answer. A specific clue can also be included for each gap. Automatic scoring is also included. The program allows gapping of selected words, or the automatic gapping of every nth word in a text. Visit the tutorial site and you can download modifications which enable you to included drop down lists at each gap point - this is a useful alternative for many pupils.
	The JMatch program creates matching or ordering exercises. A list of fixed items appears on the left (these can be pictures or text), with jumbled items on the right. This can be used for matching vocabulary to pictures or translations, or for ordering sentences to form a sequence or a conversation.
	The JMix program creates jumbled-sentence exercises. You can specify as many different correct answers as you want, based on the words and punctuation in the base sentence, and a hint button prompts the student with the next correct word or segment of the sentence if needed.
	The JQuiz program creates question-based quizzes. Questions can be of four different types, including multiple-choice and short-answer. Specific feedback can be provided both for right answers and predicted wrong answers or distractors. In short-answer questions, the student's guess is intelligently parsed and helpful feedback to show what part of a guess is right and what part is wrong. The student can ask for a hint in the form of a "free letter" from the answer.
	In addition, there is a sixth program called the Masher. This is designed to create complete units of material in one simple operation. If you are creating sequences of exercises and other pages that should form a unit, you may find the Masher useful. The Masher can also be used to upload Web pages not created with Hot Potatoes to the www.hotpotatoes.net server. This is the only title in this suite which requires a payment.
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