Hotpot Newbie in need of some Help/Advice

Hotpot Newbie in need of some Help/Advice

by Graham Stone -
Number of replies: 2
Picture of Testers

Hi All,

I've been using Moodle for just over a year now and I am currently using version 1.4.2 which is a fantastic learning tool.  Unfortunatly I've never used Hot Potatoes before so I know nothing about them but I've got to do a presentation next week about Moodle and one of the main things that they want to know is about using Hot Potatoes in Moodle so I was wondering if anybody in this wondeful community could give me a bit of help with these following questions.

How does Moodle use Hot Potatoes?

Are they easy to create?

What things can they do that Moodle can't already?

I look forward to your help   thoughtful 

  

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In reply to Graham Stone

Re: Hotpot Newbie in need of some Help/Advice

by John Rodgers -

Hi Graham:

We are relatively new to the use of both Moodle and Hotpotatoes, but I'll try and give you a quick picture of the complementarity.

Hot Potatoes are developed client-side, and so design and testing is very convenient and the training requirements are relatively small.

There is some addititonal functionality provided in some of the hot potato activities above that provided by the Moodle quiz features, a favorite being the "drag and drop" matching exercises.  There is a crossword puzzle exercise I have no experience with as well.

My language teachers also like the option of the on screen keyboard for the characters not usually found on student keyboards.

The hot potato module rewrites a hotpotato htm file so it will provide data for Moodle. It's still in development and so there are a few things that don't work seamlessly (pictures, back up and restore).  Thomas can give a better picture here.

Hot potatoes don't provide the same level of security as a Moodle quiz, since javascript is used to check the student work on the client side.  This may be a concern to some.

Anyways, thats a quick overview, although I'm missing lots of lists and details.

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In reply to John Rodgers

Re: Hotpot Newbie in need of some Help/Advice

by Thomas Robb -
John Rodgers' explanation is right on the mark. I think I have a fix for the problem with pictures, now. The backup module has been developed and works, but unfortunately, I haven't had time to resolve glitches with the restore module which renders the backup module useless.

I hope to have a fix for this by the end of the year.
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