This document discusses using Hot Potatoes, an authoring tool for creating interactive language exercises, in an English language vocational training course. It outlines how Hot Potatoes was used to create quizzes and activities on technological topics that provide language practice for students in fields like computer science and electronics. Examples of exercises cover areas like app development, innovation with devices like Google Glass, and the social implications of technology. Tips are provided on customizing exercises, hacking Hot Potatoes, and preparing exercises for newer standards to extend the life of the authoring tool.

1. How To Do Things with 'Hot Pots'
for your Language Class.
Joan Ripoll at
English Department
of
'Ies Abastos'
(secondary education, vocational
training, blended learning)
http://iesabastos.org
joan.ripoll@iesabastos.org

2. OUTLINE
1. Overview of vocational training courses at Ies Abastos.
2. English language in vocational training courses
3. Setting out to create an English online course with a technological flavour.
4 Authoring content and authoring content tools within institutional LMS
services: Hot Potatoes' latest developments
5. Integrating HotPot xml files into Moodle's quizzes.
6. Dealing with your students' writings
7. Massive Online Courses
8. Using NanoGongs and Vocaroo for voice recording within your course's LMS.

3. 1. Overview of vocational training courses at Ies
Abastos.

5. 2. English language in vocational training courses

6. English language in vocational training
courses for computer science
a. specialists in subject matter Two kinds of teachers are elligible
with a B2 qualification in English: to take on English-taught subjects
databasing , for ex. in our present system, either in-
class or blended learning.
b. teachers of English
departments willing to take on
such courses and re-orient them
to ESL course, with or without a
professional reference.

7. Subject matter specialists
- natural holders of knowledge about specific However,
contents.
- opportunities for real teaching practice
in international contexts should be
- should have no problems for overall course provided by educational authorities
design: long established syllabus.
towards confidence and fluency.
- unambiguous evaluation criteria.
- already one of main targets of
- bibliography is abundant in technical fields. institutional training in English language.
- teaching in el2 is not relevant when working - quality programmes should be carefully
language is English or materials are in implemented.
English.
- e-learning overrides this problem, since is
very much a tool for knowledge acquisition

8. English Language teachers:
Am I in the right place?
- glad to enter new teaching conditions?
Less teaching – more learning
- satisfied about adult students commitment..
- should have no working language problems.
However,
- vocational training areas are difficult
- publishers do their best, but online?
- in constant search for new materials.
- in need for training:
instructional design / content authoring / LMS
management..
- full of technical problems:
- >>ASSOCIATIONS and WORGROUPS

9. Collaborative environments for knowledge
transfer
Non- Profit of English teachers in Comunidad
Valenciana with very basic things in mind:
1. sharing teaching experiences in a world of
changing -and evolving, learning needs:
Two conferences, heading for the third!
2011: Listen To Many, Speak to a Few
2012: Know How, Know Who
http://apavac.blogspot.com.es/
2. meeting point, idea bank, open forum for
education professionals. Also spokespeople in
the field of educational regulations.
3. networking towards collaborative liaison with
instances of the schooling system and the
publishers.

10. ESP WORKGROUP
- resource bank for professionals involved in
vocational training.
- create a basic routine of ict practices for teachers
and also blended learning teachers
- benchmark for future collaboration with pioneers of
multilingualism or content based teaching.
- institutions have a big say in designing an attractive
plan to bring practitioners together.
>> set out to design a course for technology students

11. 3. Setting out to create an English online course
with a technological flavour

12. Faced with creating English language materials
for app developers and network technicians
● Lower grade: (16 & older)
- highly unmotivated
- dropping out from more demanding options
- only in-school groups:
● Higher grade: (18, older, adults)
- hard working
- gone through state exams
- some left university and came back to school.
● In common:
- most of them want to design video games
- both in-class and blended teaching showed very
different levels of English.
● The options were:
>> focus on language needs stemming
from subject matter.

13. A direct focus on subject matter?
- dealing with
- types of computers
- peripherals
- components
- the language of the internet
- computer acronyms
BUT:
- vocabulary became outdated:
from trackball to fingermouse
- many things were already in
English
- we wanted something
factual, but not so much.
- students got bored
- teachers got bored
>>maybe the way was to arouse the
students' and the teachers'
Curiosity.

14. What was the road to follow?
● Contents had to be technological, but not so much:
● Provide enough material for 6 months' course
● Language practice to level with B1, B2
● Comply with guidelines of 'Conselleria':
● INTERESTING but UNPRETENTIOUS TOPICS
The landing of the 'Curiosity' spacecraft. ● Media rich: video and audio from the internet
Source: nasa.gov
● Innovation / high-tech, / ict and society /
ict and health / mobile gadgetry/ USE TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO
REFLECT ON LANGUAGE, PEOPLE AND SOCIETY
THROUGH THESE VERY TRENDY TOPICS
CultureTech
>> I had discovered Culture Tech, but I hadn't
● Though language levelling was not accurate,
students reading abilities were high.
● Subject matter took them to read, not
interest in language

15. Tech Culture
Life with devices has evolved into
a specific kind of culture.
This is of course food for
journalists, who often write good
English about very catchy topics
http://news.cnet.com/cutting-edge/
>>Again, some exploitation work
is still left to do......using my old
tools

16. Language work on audio script
House's student app competition
I'm Larry Magid, CBS NEWS and CNET
Congress can't agree on much these days, but the US house of
Representatives still did pass a resolution calling for a student
app competition to encourage young people to set up mobile
and computer applications to be recognized by Congress. This
resolution was co-sponsored by Republican congressman Bob
Led of Virginia, and by democratic congresswoman Ann Eshoo
of California. To find out more about the resolution, I spoke by
phone with congresswoman Eshoo.
Anna Eshoo
This congress passed resolution is very, very exciting because
it establishes an academic competition to promote STEM
education among American students and it's really in many
ways modelled after the congressional art competition which is
nation-wide effort. It's been in place for about 30 years and it's
really fostered magnificent art which is then displayed in the
halls of the capital of the United States and draws and rewards
young people in the promotion of art in their lives. And of course
that's very important for the life of our country

17. Final 'Student app competition' listening
comprehension quiz
- css changes have been
introduced.
- online google player is embedded
into title of 'add text' facility, so it
won't move while scrolling.
- previous discussion work should
be done.
- technical and language
considerations should be made
>>sheer innovation was another
possibility

18. Innovation: catching the user's eye .
GOOGLE GLASS PROJECT
Activity Sheet
1. Answer the following questions about the clip.
1. What do you think the video is going to be about?
2. Where's the guy in the clip? What city is it?
3. Explain the meaning of each of the 12 icons that you see in the clip?
4. What time is he meeting Jess? What does g+ mean? And 58º?
5. A weather widget appears, what kind of information does it give? What's the weather like in the
city at the moment.
Screenshot of Google's presentation video of
'Google Glass' project.
- Very innovative
- Suitable for computer science, electronics, business
administration and even health.
- Innovation lends itself to discussion and even
controversy: very suitable as a writing assignment.
- Easily available in the media: leading to further reading,
watching or follow-up research
- Minimalistic in terms of language: lends itself to suit
your exploitation needs
>>some deeper thinking: impact of technolgy on society

19. Social implications of technology: to elicit
discussion
- listening-watching comprehension
- reading comprehension from transcript
- a careful choice of topic proves highly language productive
in terms of eliciting a debate
- some discussion has proved very stimulating for students
- adults don't get too many opportunities to use their spoken
WHAT IS WEB 2.0?
English
- level of many Spanish adults is not very high.
“Web 2.0 I think is a step change because it’s
about changing people’s roles and attitudes and
position with regard to information and culture and - link to video on your LMS and set as discussion topic in
meaning, because people move from being simply forums or in tutorials.
consumers or followers or readers or viewers to
becoming contributors and participants as well.” - can be used as writing assignment: look for originality.
>>using real materials

20. ICT and health: using authoring tools to produce
online work from written texts
- real written materials are abundant in the web
- focus on ict jobs, resume writing or applying for a job.
- a wide choice of ict jobs out there many young people
are having access to.
-create an awareness that many ict jobs have a lateral
relation to technology
>>hot pot factsheet

21. Digital Debris: customizing language
work
Allen Sherkovitz:
This is a serious (22)______________, because of what these products are made from.
The components of electronic waste, which (23)______________ coating plastics as
well as heavy metals can emit pollutants stating danger for human
(24)______________ and the (25)______________.
Ted Smith:
Right now,most electronic (26)______________ that is collected is exported, so most
of it is not processed in the US. Anyway, from 50 to 80% of all electronic products
collected in the US are in fact exported and may be causing harm elsewhere.
average bring in changed circuit boards comes CONTAINS contains
contributes Despite easier environment few health home include issue
largest most now out price than throwing out update waste Workers
- looking for clips with captions is
2. Look at the words above and choose the ones that mean the following. desirable
1. component where the electronic device is printed.
2. bring to a more modern version
- language work:
3. earn
- reading comprehension
4. problem - vocabulary
5. natural background - grammar work and writing
>>example of worksheet using Hot
Pots

22. 4 Authoring content and authoring content tools
within institutional LMS services: Hot Potatoes'
latest developments

23. Hot Potatoes fact sheet
- perfect for quiz authoring, 6 types of
activities.
- easily customizable through CSS and
Javascript
- fast learning curve
- free: even Masher!
- not open- source: that's why the project
can't be supported by a different
developer.
- HP here to stay -hopefully!
>>vital for in-class and blended learning

24. The final xml file is suitable both for blended and
classroom learning
- interactive using Hot Pots allows integration within
LMS and projection in classroom.
- quizzes should tend towards simplicity. Many
inaccuracies stem from users not being too proficient
with ict.
- outdated and 90's: on the other hand it's an automatic
version of what you would find in most text books
- Moodle forums are very active and new developments
are about to arrive.
- A few developers are still implementing the project: I
will be going into the work of some of them
- Michael Rottmeier and his HotPot based 'Hangman'.
>>example of Rottmeier's 'Hangman'.

25. Michael Rottmeiers's 'Hangman'
- students' favourites:
really easy to configure.
- created by Rottmeier some years ago:
not free, but possible to create 'three-
word sets'.
- won't be databased by your Moodle
-no doubt brighten up your online
courses and can be used in weekly
tutorials or interactive whiteboards.
- do syntactic 'hangmen': fantastic for
everyday grammar classes
>>Hot Pots are easily hacked if you are
familiar with code

26. Hacking Hot Potatoes
Stewart Arneil and Martin Holmes
University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media
Centre
basic hacking of their software at
hotpot.uvic.ca/howto/hacking_hotpot.htm
Stan Bogdanov, working at University of Sofia: very
generous developer with a wonderful website offering a
Taxonomy of exercises.
Left: Multiple drag and drop JMIX from Bogdanov's
website's TAXONOMY.
Very useful but results won't go into Moodle's database
>>http://www.ewbooks.info

27. Stan Bogdanov's Hot Pot's at
http://www.ewbooks.info
- Implementing hotpot quizzes for a long time now.
TAXONOMY:
- dozens of modified exercises like the previous
one.
TUTORIALS:
- 35 tutorials on how to easily modify hotpots if
you are not an expert.
ADD-ONS:
- relevant step towards modernizing the suite and
bring it to TABLETS and SMARTPHONES
through XHTML5
ONE OF FORUM'S LEADING VOICE'S with
Gordon Bateson
>>and his Taskchain implementation

28. Gordon Bateson's 'Taskchain' running under
Moodle 2.4
- Moodle 2.4 is supposed to include a
file caching system, so everything
will be faster.
- 'Taskchain' (QuizPort) is intended to
integrate a set of hotpot interactives ,
with an entry page and an exit page.
The marks would be global for the
whole knowledge area.
- this is intended to substitute Hot
Potatoes as a module, not as a xml
file creating tool.
- some new things on Moodle 2.4
navigation and settings menus
>>contribution to a new look

29. Hot Pot's future developments:
HotPot's new look

30. How to easily facelift your hotpots using css
- Go to Bogdanov's site and
download the folders
- substitute an old folder with the
new folder containing the modified
files.
- preserve old folder in case you
want to revert to old look.
-create and save exercise.
>>migrating to xhml5

31. Migrating and validating HotPot for xhtml 5: giving
Hot Pots some new life
- another tweaking suggestion of Bogdanov's
- pretty technical issue.
- take some time for a slow read and a cup of coffee
or
wait until Martin Holmes re-writes the whole suite:
After I validated HotPotatoes output with HTML5 audio
and video as Polyglot markup* (both HTML5 and
XHTML5), and after the discovery of how to validate
Dublin Core meta data (see the two demo files below
from the Taxonomy), Martin has decided to start porting
HotPotatoes so the suite we all love could be given
another 5 to 10 years of life. In the meantime, here are
some things to consider if you'd like to get your
HotPotatoes exercises ready for HTML5 audio and video.
- so, after we've decided on our hotpots' design and
configuration....
>>uploading your quizzes to Moodle

32. LMS is one of possible targets: upload printable
and interactive versions.
Workflow model.
1. Define Topic
2. Look for online video clips: most important stage.
3. Transcript: allows students to read passages and do
extensive reading practice.
4. Interactive language work: HP's
- make sure quiz design is uniform
- check for bugs: students are very aware of quizzes
not working properly and will use forums to report.
- careful use of lms grading system: how much
should online work weigh on the whole evaluation
process?
5. Interactive-printable version---used with projector for bi-
weekly tutorials:
- should provide enough practice in grammar and
reading comprehension skills
6. Upload to LMS for online course.
7. quiz making and importing>>

33. 5. Integrating HotPot xml files into Moodle's quizzes.

34. Importing Hot Pots into Moodle's quiz system
- Moodle 1.9 includes a Hot Pot
Import menu, altogether with other
types of exercises
- Very useful feature in that it allows
creating a safe environment and the
look is very uniform
- Category should be created
maybe according to name of test.
- The system would parse .jcl, .jqz,
.jmx and other files
>>a question bank is created

35. Moodle 1.9 question bank
- next step in quiz creation is one of
Moodle's best features
- create and sort categories = names
of tests
- edit quiz >>click on quiz
- from previously hot pot imported
questions into question bank category,
the quiz is filled.
- desired settings should be applied as
for overview options and other details
>>final result renders high quality
looking tests, absolutely databased.

36. Hot Pot .Jcl + .Jqz into Moodle 1.9 Quiz
>>missing in Moodle 2.0

37. Moodle 2.0 lacks Hot Pot import
- Moodle's 2.0 version lacks Hot
Pot import module by default,
since it is now contributed module.
- Gordon Bateson provides the
module and very easy install
instructions in Moodle's forum if
you log up as an administrator.
- As an administrator, some plug-
in folders with the software should
be uploaded to your folder tree
It is a very useful tool, however>>

38. Moodle 2.0's automatic marking of Hot Pot
produced quiz
>>what about writing?

39. 6. Dealing with your students' writings

40. 'Google forms' are a neat solution to retrieve your
students' writings
- Convenient: online stored.
- there for a long time but innovative in that it is
not very popular among teachers
- Awareness on easy solutions to learning
problems using ict: basic information retrieval
for other contexts: professional surveys, f.
example
disadvantages:
- comments- markings are not individual
- reliability: most students google answers
>>word processors' comments are another
solution

41. Using Advanced Assignment Upload and Word
processor's 'comments'
- Essential for writing fedback to writing
in online language courses.
- allows individual comments
- students highly value the teacher's
work on their writings
- use insert----comment and save as the
marked file
- writing is the poorest skill in most
Spanish students' A2 tests, now run at all
Valencian schools and extensive practice
should improve it.
>>Massive Open Online Courses are
already running

42. 7. Massive Online Courses

43. The current global IT boat
MOOC: Massive Open Online Course
WHAT IS A MOOC ANYWAY?
(from thenewyorktimes.com)
● Traditional online courses charge tuition, carry credit and limit
enrollment to a few dozen to ensure interaction with instructors.
The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less and,
well, massive.
● Because anyone with an Internet connection can enrol, faculty can’t
possibly respond to students individually.
So the course design — how material is presented and the
interactivity — counts for a lot. As do fellow students.
Classmates may lean on one another in study groups organized in
their towns, in online forums or, the prickly part, for grading work.
● The evolving form knits together education, entertainment (think
gaming) and social networking. Unlike its antecedent, open
courseware — usually written materials or videotapes of lectures that
make you feel as if you’re spying on a class from the back of the room
— the MOOC is a full course made with you in mind.
>>so what is content authoring in times of Coursera or Open
University

44. Content authoring in the times of
Coursera
● Courses are made with user in mind,
also for life- long learners and therefore
teachers may also feel attracted.
● Suitable for subject matter specialists.
● High quality graphics: photo and video
● Addressed to university students: very
high-end, with elite teachers.
● The format is perfect for an English
language online course.
● Very often transcripts and videos are
available, so you can use for your
classes.

45. The Open University model
>>expanding to other Universities
The Bill Gates of Africa
You've been described as the Bill Gates of Africa. Is this a compliment or a curse?
It's flattering but, I'm no bill Gates. I'm not that rich. I'm not American. I'm not global. I'm just in Africa
doing my best. I'm trying to. To do my little piece and my little corner.
The title that you were given is because of the impact of software development, which is often
overlooked in people's perception of Africa. I wondered if you could share with us something of your
vision of how software development and what you are actually doing.
Well, I do two main things. Around Soft Tribe which is a software company. We develop software and
we've done it for 20 years and also latterly run another company called Blackstar Line which we set an
African E-Bay and an African PayPal. Both companies have bee;I think and will continue to be, quite
impactful on the regional economy, and in Africa generally. Soft Tribe computerized the first, in Ghana,
supermarkets, hotels, restaurants. We brought order through technology to the accounting,
management and so on. It made a big difference. Travel agencies, schools, multinationals in Africa.
We've done a lot of work for them too, so...It became quite significant as an entity, as a force doing that.
Recently, due to the proliferation of global phones,and the advent of internet and so on in Africa,we
see big opportunities. Today, our products, a lot of them are cloud-based or sms based. We are having
some good successes with some very interesting products like mobile phone based security systems for
anti malware attacks, pay-as-as-you-go insurance: card based. You know, buy, sratch, text, bum, that
kind of thing.
Our biggest, a project that we are working on, which I'm most excited about is our shop in Africa,
shopafrica53.com project, where we intend to bring the ordinary African merchant . As long they have a
product and a mobile phone and they can receive sms, we're looking to bring them onto the global trade
arena, so they can sell their wares across the world
-.

46. What are our chances when education goes
global?
- educational content is everywhere
available – FREE!
- Universities and institutions have become
aware
check out: http://innodoct.webs.upv.es/
- making our content local, customizable
and closer could be the solution.
- human contact and drawing has given
best results, at least in my case.
- only students who attended tutorial
passed the course.

47. 8. NanoGongs and Vocaroo

48. NanoGong Module: voice support for Moodle 1.
and 2.
- is on since 2007
- a Java applet that can be used by someone to
record, playback and save their voice, in a web
page.
>>watch presentation video from folder
- Through integration with Moodle's html's editor,
the students' recordings can be uploaded to the
LMS for the teacher to assess as a speaking
assignment.
- check user guide at:
http://gong.ust.hk/nanogong/moodle2_guide.html

49. VOCAROO: online voice support

50. AM I IN THE RIGHT PLACE?

51. Watch the video

52. conclusions
- learning has never been easier and can be
really good fun.
- teaching can become a bit of a complicated
business.
- using ICT wisely will enrich your students'
learning experience and will improve the
teachers' professional careers.
- training is basic and will become essential
to go into the teaching profession.
- online and blended learning should evolve
towards a social activity and human contact,
>>a laugh is always good