How to create your own learning activities using Hot Potatoes
Nathalie Cazaux
Dept. of Languages & Business Studies, Institute of Technology,
Blanchardstown.
Email: nathalie.cazaux@itb.ie
This presentation seeks to
understand the advantages of using authoring software such as Hot Potatoes in
order to create language games, which are specifically targeted at our
learners. Too often, Computers in Language Learning mean using expensive
CD-ROMs that do not really reflect the students’ areas of interest. The World
Wide Web is another important source of material but, among an immense
collection of material of all sorts, it is quite difficult to find exercises
that are well adapted. Another disadvantage of the web is that it changes all
the time and can prove to be an unreliable resource. One solution is to mix the
reliability and ease of use of CD-ROMs with the specificity of the Web by
creating your own web site and exercises.
The presentation will
develop the following ideas:
Based on cognitive
psychology research, what are the activities that we need to create in order to
help learners learn best? What are other questions we should ask ourselves
before embarking on the development of the exercises: how much time can we
spend on this? Who are we targeting? How will this material be used?
I propose to develop these points in the first part of my presentation and then explore the possibilities offered by the Hot Potatoes software.
I
Introduction
I never liked computers, or
should I say computers never liked me. This is the reason why I want to start
this presentation by stressing the fact that I am not a computer specialist and
I am very often frustrated by computers. Everything that follows is attainable:
we will try to get an overview of the reasons why we should use software such
as Hot Potatoes, what we can do with it
and how to start using the software.
First, I am going to give
you a tour of the site I built with Dreamweaver and Hot Potatoes. Then we will
get a quick overview to what Cognitive Psychology has to teach us regarding the
best multimedia practices. Finally, Hot Potatoes will be reviewed and briefly explained.
II The end
product: what can be created without being a computer genius
Click on the following address to see what I created:
http://www.it-tallaght.ie/humanities/languages/faisons_affaires/Index.htm
III Why
use Hot Potatoes?
3.1
Multimedia[1]
Learning according to cognitive psychology research
Cognitive psychology research has been for many years investigating the
mechanisms of cognition and learning. It is vital for us (interested in
pedagogy and in improving the quality of our teaching) to follow this branch of
psychology’s findings. In his eloquent article, Professor Doolittle presents a
very useful table synthesizing the findings of several researches:
|
Empirical findings |
Practical implications |
|
Multimedia Principle: Students learn
better from words and pictures than from words alone. |
Simple blocks of text or auditory only links are less effective than
when this text or narration is coupled with visual images. |
|
Spatial Contiguity
Principle: Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are
presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen. |
When presenting coupled text and images, the text should be close to
or embedded within the images. Placing text under an image (i.e., a caption)
is sufficient, but placing the text within the image is more effective. |
|
Temporal Contiguity
Principle: Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are
presented simultaneously rather than successively. |
When presenting coupled text and images, the text and images should
be presented simultaneously. When animation and narration are both used, the
animation and narration should coincide meaningfully. |
|
Coherence Principle: Students learn
better when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded rather than
included. |
Multimedia presentations should focus on clear and concise
presentations. Presentations that add "bells and whistles" or
extraneous information (e.g. to increase interest) impede student learning. |
|
Modality Principle: Students learn
better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text. |
Multimedia presentations involving both words and pictures should be
created using auditory or spoken words, rather than written text to accompany
the pictures. |
|
Redundancy Principle: Student learn
better from animation and narration than from animation, narration, and
on-screen text. |
Multimedia presentations involving both words and pictures should
present text either in written form, or in auditory form, but not in both. |
|
Individual Differences
Principles: Design effects are stronger for low-knowledge learners than for
high-knowledge learns and for high spatial learners rather than from low
spatial learners. |
The aforementioned strategies are most effective for novices (e.g.,
low-knowledge learners) and visual learners (e.g., high-spatial learners).
Well structured multimedia presentations should be created for they are most
likely to help. |
3.2 Effect on motivation
My own experience tells me that using multimedia and computers have at
least three advantages:
-variety helps to keep motivation level
-learners have more control (pace, choices, etc)
-instant feedback, immediate interactivity
However, the material proposed should always be extremely relevant to the course, otherwise, motivation is lost. Vocabulary used in a lesson or used by the students can be then integrated in an exercise.
3.3 Pedagogical advantages
Problems can arise with exercises that focus too much on form over meaning. There is a tendency, with such exercises that learners use a logical process (if it’s not a then, it’s b) to formulate the correct answers without really learning the language at all.
As well, it cannot be used as exams as the file with answers is apparently quite easy to retrieve.
On a more positive note, we can underline the fact that, if the exercises are well prepared, the fact that most of them propose hints and feedback make the learners really work towards the answers, engaging them in deeper and thus more effective cognitive processes.
You can also give one computer for 2 or three students and make them work in groups, trying to communicate in the target language.
Finally, if we want to be really adventurous, we can have students
creating their own material. This shows how easy Hot Potatoes is to use.
Involvement is the key, and I believe this from my own experience, as I did not
know anything about French grammar before having to teach it.
"People learn when they are engaged in building a "personally
meaningful" project. Also, if
students may become more deeply entwined in their own learning process if they
are forming or building something that others may view, evaluate, or even
implement into their own lives.” (Papert and Resnick cited in “Constructionism”
website cited itself in this excellent site: http://www.yoell.fsnet.co.uk/HotPotatoes.htm)
3.4 Interactivity
The first level of interactivity is when you click on a word and this action brings you to another page.
The second level is when you buy a product online or when you play a game, it is a functional interactivity.
The third and maybe most interesting level is when the user becomes creator of the object, for instance with creative writing.
What I have created with Hot potatoes
uses the first level and the second level, and in order to access to the third
level, I should have students creating their own web pages and their own
exercises.
IV Description of Hot
Potatoes
Developed by “Half-baked Software”, a Canadian educational group, this
software presents six separate but lookalike programs for producing exercises
for the web.
The creators have succeeded in devising programs that automatically
transform the teacher’s words into interactive web pages.
The use of the product is free as long as you do not make money with it
but you need to register in order to be able to use the full version of the
programs. Downloading is done via their website at:
http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/#downloads
Here are the different possibilities:
JBC
This program creates multiple choice answer quizzes of the sort that will be immediately recognisable to students. You can include a written text, with a reading time limit, and questions can have up to four answers. Feedback leading the student towards the correct answer can be included, although if none is entered, the default message “try again” is received.
JQuiz
This program creates short answer quizzes. The learner types the answer in the text-field and receives
feedback from the computer. Up to four
possible correct answers are available, assuming the teacher has included
them. Holmes and Arneil were keen to avoid
a simple “one click right/wrong” (Holmes and Arneil 1999:p.13) interface, so
instead they allow for more useful feedback.
The computer tells you what part of your answer is correct, better involving students. Especially good for spelling trials and more subtle than the right or wrong programs.
JMix
This program creates jumbled sentence
exercises that are very similar to ones that can be created with paper and
scissors. Again, what is good is that
the teachers are able to include all combinations, so the learner isn’t faced
with correct suggestions being rejected by the computer.
JCross
This program creates crossword puzzles 20x20 letters in size. Clues can be either in word-form or as pictures (pictures are a bit harder to create).
This program can produce either listing
exercises, for example placing frequency adverbs in order, or matching
exercises, such as linking countries and nationalities or beginning and ending
of sentences. As with JCross, pictures
can be used in place of words.
JCloze
This program creates gap-filling exercises. The java-script looks for parts of right answers, but only one answer for each gap is accepted and feedback is limited.
There is also a very useful tutorial proposed with each version.
For the students themselves, titles and instructions are displayed at
all times. You can have them either in
L1 or L2 (as for the feedbacks). The text colour and font can be changed as
well from the main page. The program
also allows for the insertion of pictures if needed. The good news for us is that the program can be used without
altering the settings at all, as the default settings offer sufficient
information to the student.
V Conclusion
Benefits: Fun
Increase exposure
to TL
Increase
motivation as long as material is directly linked to course/interest
Language learning
as long as focus is on content rather than language
Hot Potatoes is only a tool, and thus it can only reach all its potentials in the hand of the inventive teacher.
2 examples of what can be done with Hot Potatoes:
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.glover/S.Glover/languagesite/Default.htm
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/canonave/index.htm
2 reviews of the software:
http://www.yoell.fsnet.co.uk/HotPotatoes.htm
http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num2/review3/default.html
P. Doolittle, 2001: Multimedia Learning:
Empirical Results and Practical Applications
http://www.ipfw.edu/as/tohe/2001/Papers/doo.htm
[1] By Multimedia I mean the use of different medium at the same time (written –board, paper, page on a web site- aural –sounds, voices, music- visual –images, videos)