Baking Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes are perhaps the oldest living and upgraded, free authoring software for making interactive exercises. It offers five types of tasks: multiple choice, gapfill, matching, crossword and jumbled letters/words/sentences.

Remember!
When working with HP, you enter information into a “T’s Book” – a file with the extension .j** (.jcl. jmt…)
After finishing the exercise, you EXPORT it into html (“S’s book”). The names of the files should be identical, apart from the extension.
HotPot software does not recognise subfolders. All HotPot files AND all used images must be in the same folder


TASK 1
Choose a target age group and a topic for your own HotPot project – preferably a vocabulary field, which is taught at basic schools. Write your choice into the comment to this blog – each student must have an unique topic.
List ten vocabulary items (NOT proper names!) belonging to the chosen field – these you will present and practice in ALL THREE of your HotPot exercises.

Example:
endangered animals: snow leopard, elephant, lowland gorilla, vari, Comodo dragon... etc.


TASK 2
Use the web and find illustrations to the ten words you have chosen - the images should be in jpg format, between 10-20 kilobytes. Save them into a folder "HotPot" you create in your flashdisc.
SAVE the Urls of pages you use for downloading pictures! You will publish them as references.

TASK 3
Start working on a matching exercise, presenting the meaning of the ten words you have chosen, through the pictures. Use images of cca 20-40K size, approx. 100*100 pixels, all the same format!

HotPot Tutorial Online

Learning objectives - In this seminar you should learn how to:
- create a matching exercise in HP, save, export into html
- modify the colours of HP exercises
- insert images into HP exercises, set their size and position
- add and/or modify prompts and feedback in HP exercises
- set the timer, shuffle questions, show a limited number of questions in HP exercises

Vsuvka - role internetu v životě učitele

Do schools kill creativity?
Watch + listen carefully and think. Do you agree with Sir Robinson's ideas? What are the implications?

Jak to chodí v Čechách aneb historie sprosťáka z Krupky (další info v odkazech pod články)
text 1
text 2

Starting a Website

Today you should start your brand new personal web site. Your own web space serves as a presentation of your individual achievements, as well as the place to upload and publish your projects.
First, read all the tasks, listed below; you can fulfill them in random order.

If in doubt, do not hesitate to ask!

1. Draw the structure of your future web on a sheet of paper. Check the credit requirements on the English Dept. web page to get an idea what the compulsory parts are.

2. Open Notepad (Poznamkovy blok) and write the text you would like to publish in your site. Start with the content of the index page - the first page the user will see. Keep the Internet Safety Rules in mind – do not publish your personal data (the date of birth, phone number, credit card numbers …)

3. Open the WYSIWYG web editor New View (nvu.exe) and explore the possibilities of the software.
Above all, learn how to:

• - modify colours
• - insert images
• - organise the page content using frames (tables)
• - insert links into text and images

Of course there are more elegant ways of editing, but our main aim is to understand the principles of web creation. If you are safe in this field, feel free to apply your creativity and do more!

4. Start new web at webzdarma.cz and upload your files (index.html, images...)

5. Publish the URL of your new web as a comment to this blog. :)


HOMEWORK:
Bring an English textbook (basic school level)  for the next lesson.


Do not forget our three main rules:

1. SAVE, SAVE, SAVE (and upload)
2. NO DIACRITICS, NO SPACES IN FILENAMES
3. ALL-IN-ONE (folder, of course)

...AND MORE:
Ideas and instructions on web page creation: http://www.jakpsatweb.cz/
Musing about your web colours? Read this for inspiration.

Introduction

What are your expectations? What do you believe will be the content of this subject? What do you wish to learn?

Task 1: Write your ideas into the comment to this blog entry.
Tip: If you have a Google account, log in, it will make your commenting easier.

Task 2: Choose your IWB topic
At first, you should choose the topic for your interactive board materials, and list the keywords you want to teach. Into the comments to this blog entry, please include:
1. Topic
2. target group - age, class
3. the textbook you are using
4. the list of 10-12 keywords.
The material will develop the chosen vocabulary in a 45' lesson.
Do not forget to sign your entry.

TASK 3:
Install Smart Notebook and Activ Inspire (full professional versions) into your home computer.

TASK 4:
Start a website at webzdarma.cz

TASK 5:
Download and install NVU - freeware for web page editing.