Reflection on Hot Potatoes

Before i start my reflection, let me tell you a little bit about Hot Potatoes. The application has nothing to do with food although the name might sound like a vegetable. Hot Potatoes is a freeware and user-friendly application which allow users to download it directly from the World Wide Web. The package includes six applications, which enables you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises which can be use for any purpose or project. It comes in Version 6 created by Half-Baked Software Inc.

The application was first introduced to me and my classmates by Dr Izaham during our TSL641 Computer Assisted Language Learning class. It is a simple yet interesting and easy to use application. Hot Potatoes is suitable for all kinds of computer users even for the beginners. The names are quite catchy since they use names like 'JMatch, JCloze, JMix, JCross and JQuiz'. Users can easily figure out which application is for which by identifying the names. Hot Potatoes ensures the possibility of creating any kinds of worksheets. Everything is just a click-away. Why bother to do things the hard way when we have a software like this to makes things a whole lot easier for us? To make it more interesting, we could add on pictures and sounds which can be linked directly from the web or can be uploaded from our computers. Each icon on the task bar represent different things and when we want to view the worksheet, our work is automatically saved. This is wonderful because sometimes we do forget to save our work to the computer and this is very dangerous because once it is lost, we can never retrieve it back. It ensures the security of our work. However, one weakness which I manage to identify is that the software a bit rigid since there are things which can't be customized. Changing fonts for example is not that easy.  However, if the user happens to have extra knowledge on using HTML codes would be great. This is because things like centralizing the title and making paragraphs need the codes because the application does not provide them for users.

Hot Potatoes is as hot as the name is and it brings a fun learning environment for both teachers and students. I am sure more people will be using it later on and of course I will use it as well in the future. I am very thankful to Dr Izaham for exposing us to the application and I hope I can produce better worksheets and exercises for the students. From what I can see, I have actually expanded my creativity throughout the lessons. =)