REFLECTION ON HOT POTATOES

We have been introduced to Hot Potatoes 4 weeks ago, and I realized that the function of the application is very useful, undeniably. Based on my understanding, this software is designed to help teachers or educators in order to prepare exercise for students regardless of age since most people are exposed to the internet nowadays. I have browsed into the website of this software and found out this; “The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like”. Based on the source from Wikipedia, this program was created by the Research and Development team at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre and the commercial aspects of the software are handled by Half-Baked Software Inc.

We have learned on 3 elements of Hot Potatoes, which are Jclose, Jmix and Jmatch. Basically, what I can say about this application is user friendly. The application can be learned and can be easily used by people who want to use it. The idea is very simple where we only have to put in the input for the exercise, and the application will do everything for you, with some instruction from us of course. Another term that is suitable for this application is practical. It is not a burden for people who want to learn about this application. Get a peer or an instructor, and I believe that in a few of times he or she will be able to do an exercise by using this application. So in this new world, everyone should have the ability to use and apply such kind of technology.

However, I realized something bad about this application. First, when we want to attach pictures in our exercises or as background. If we select insert from local file, other people will not be able to retrieve the exercise perfectly from other computer. The picture or background will not appear in the exercise. I realized that when I’m doing Jclose exercise. When I changed the source to ‘insert from URL’, everything back to normal. Another complicated thing that can be found in this application is the selection of fonts. Fonts play an important role to attract the users of an exercise. However, the selection of fonts part is not so user-friendly for me. It is a complicated thing to do where we have to choose our font based on the name and then type it. It will take a long time to do so and people tend to ignore about the selection of fonts (my experience).