A Review on HotPotatoes

The Programme

The programme Hot Potatoes is a product by Half-Baked Software. It is designed to allow teachers, and trainee teachers as well, to make interactive, Web-based exercises that can be accessed by students at any computer with a standard Web browser and Internet connection. The software uses both HTML and JavaScript. However, one does not need to know these languages to make the the exercises. Instead, teachers use the programme's exercise templates to create exercises on Web pages which then can be uploaded to a server where students access them. Another alternative is to have the exercises saved in a CD.

Hot Potatoes can create five different types of Web-based exercises (i.e JCloze, JMatch, JMix, JCross and JQuiz). They can be stand alone or linked to other exercises to form a series of tasks by using The Masher tool. Students can also review and correct their own work based on the clues and feedback prepared by the teacher. The software also allows the teacher to specify an email address to which scores are sent. Although no knowledge of Web design is necessary, teachers with such skills can make customade materials to a greater degree by altering the programme code.

The Review

To all things manmade, there are pros and cons. Although HotPotatoes provides quite a vast pool of possibilities and combinations of exercises, it lacks of control. The software is too simple that it is not recommended for a class of students who are very well exposed to other advance coursewares in the market. The flaws can be seen in the usage and the product.

HotPotatoes is not the most user-friendly software to make courseware out there. The teachers need to go for training in order to be able to try this programme. There is no tutorial provided or manual for a beginner to explore this software on their own. Even with proper guides, HotPotatoes is still a hassle. For example, in using the JMix, one need to go through all of the sentence files in order to make them linked to one another. It is very confusing as the tools are not that helpful and proned for failure to publish. Another nuisance would be the constant clicking and saving the files when previewing the exercises.

The students may also perceive the software as a bore. Even by attaching pictures and videos, the layout is not inviting enough. It lacks of aesthetic persentation is the least of the problem. The end product may also be either belittling the students' intelligence or on the extreme, too difficult. Some of the exercises could end up as a trial-and-error clicking games. No learning would take place.

Having said all that, I see potential in HotPotatoes in a distant future, after it has undergone several patches, updates and versions. For the time being, I would not recommend the software for urban and suburban students as their PSPs and social networking websites outplay this programme. However, for any rural and remote school student, HotPotatoes may or may not be attractive enough. To some all of that, it is pretty clear that HotPotatoes is apperantly not hot enough for the market.