The magic code.

It has been my mission in life over the last couple of weeks to take an interactive game/exercise that, on paper, looks like this

and make an interactive exercise on screen that looks similar. Creating the game itself inside hot potatoes was not terribly difficult but my problem has been the colours. I had experimented in other types of exercise with adding pictures. This achieved the goal but it was time consuming and messy, furthermore, it is impossible to put pictures into the middle of a sentence. So I was left with a set of exercises, some of which were beautifully colour coded (the colours refer to the sub-list of the academic word list the vocab is from) and some which just had a number next to them to denote the sub-list. This irritated my sense of perfection so I set about trying to fix it.

Firstly I learnt that you can write directly into a hot-potato file in html code and it will be recognised. From there it was just a case of finding the right bit of code and applying it to the exercises I had already created.

The magic code can be found here and I can put this into any type of hot potato and it gives me something which looks like this

Pretty similar to the one at the top of the page don't you think?

If you look carefully you will see I changed the text slightly, I was forced to do this to make it fit on the page but other than that.... a resounding success.

Time to put the kettle on I think....

pexaso, pelmanism, memory, pairs....

... or however you want to name it. This project has been at the back of my mind for a while and seemed to have succeeded my search for a web based programme that will allow me to do it. It is by no means perfect but it is functional, it does animate one of my AWL games and it will (test pending) more than likely work on an IWB so it ticks all of the boxes.

I used this site  http://matchthememory.com/  which unfortunately looks a bit childish (it is designed for kids) but I can over look that for the time being.

I wanted to make a list of AWL vocabulary into a memory game whereby students would match a word from a given sub-list, in this case 1 and 2, with its opposite or antonym. I was largely successful in doing this. There were a few issues, the most cosmetic of which being that the font was slightly too large and some of the words didn't quite fit but for a 1st attempt I can deal with that.

The nature of the game is simply memory match two cards which are the same. This does not quite work if you want the matching cards to have opposites on them. To solve this I had to make the exercise a picture - word match. I did this by making the word list vocabulary into .jpg files and uploading them. This then has the residual benefit of giving me the colour coding that I have in the paper games that I have been struggling to get with hot-potatoes.

All in all a successful experiment!

Confusable words with images

So after my frustrations in the last post about the incorporation of images into hot-potatoes I have think I have worked out how to do it. I initially found the instructions for moodle and then adapted them for use in my wiki. In moodle you must upload all of the files in the same way as normal but it is important that you include the .jpg files in the same folder as the .htm files and the hot-potato files.

So to do this on the wiki using dropbox as the web host should be fairly simple (should!). As in moodle you need to put all the files, including the pictures, into dropbox. Then you need to open the hot-potato files and save the .htm files straight into dropbox. You can then put the public links into the i-frame script as before and it seems to work at least here!

I did discover some other things in the process. If you open files in dropbox on the web the images disappear. So my suggestion here is... don't open the files! If you open files containing images in moodle they are fine. From this I assume that if you have a proper web server it wouldn't be a problem.
With that in mind I have worked out a way for it not to matter a great deal. If you are using the images as part of a matching exercise at least (with images for other purposes it would not work so well)
What you need to do is this
When you upload the file into your potato file you simply change the alt text from example.jpg to simply example the if the images disappear for any reason you will be left with the words which will make the matching exercise functional if not quite so pretty.

AWL conjunctions

I have recently resurrected an old project and combined it with my hot potatoes project. The old project being to liven up the academic word list with games to help students learn the vocab so it lends itself quite well to being made interactive. My first attempt has been quite successful, superficially at least. There are a few things that didn't work as I wanted them to but that is just something to work on next time, realistically I did achieve a set of interactive exercises embedded into a single web page and looking quite nice!

The main thing to work on is incorporation of images, in my paper games for the AWL I have vocabulary colour co-ordinated by sub-list. I succeeded in doing this with some of the exercises by making the words into images with coloured backgrounds. Unfortunately when I uploaded them to dropbox I lost the images so in this set of exercises there are a lot of white boxes. My next challenge is colour!

Oh and mobile function... some of the exercises work on my smart-phone, some don't. I suspect that any of the exercises that involve moving blocks will be difficult to make really usable on a phone but equally I think they will be the best type of exercises for use on IWB's and tablets.

hot potatoes and wikispaces 2

.... and success

Dropbox recently stopped creating public folders with new accounts so my dropbox was somewhat bereft. This bereavement wouldn't be a problem for normal users but if you want one of your documents to be publicly accessible then it is quite useful. Fortunately it is possible to enable one in your new account

instructions here

once you have done that you can add the htm file from your hot potato quiz to your public folder, copy the public link (instructions for this are also in the page mentioned above) and put that link into the handy piece of code I mentioned in the last post. Just to prove it works I am going to try and add a quiz into this post...



If you see it then I was successful. Incidental, this is a quiz from my Life in the UK test project, section 2, how the UK is governed.

Hot potatoes and wikispaces

When I was working on my DTTLS I created a wikispaces page. At this point it is still not public because it is very much a work in progress. One of the things I wanted to do with it was be able to put interactive material into it. I have used hot potatoes a lot in moodle and today I set about trying to get a hot potatoes quiz into my wiki. I didn't necessarily think it was possible but, success!

Here is how I did it.

The best way to do this is probably by uploading your hot potato files onto hotpotatoes.net. This will allow you give students log in details to their own quizzes as well as giving you a teacher log-on where you can check scores etc. However it is not a free service and when in the testing stage, as I am,  it is hard to justify the cost. So I needed to find a free web host, while drop box is not exactly this it does hold files on the web.

Then using the lovely bit of script
From this wiki, you only need to put into your wiki page as 'other html' under the instert widget option. The there you have it. There is a hot potato in your wiki page.

Unfortunately there is a problem with this. The web page in dropbox is https:// so only works on my browser when logged in as me. So in a sense, this is successful but I need to go back to dropbox and work out how to make files public. 

to be continued...

World Trade Game take 2

I have played the World Trade Game before and you can see the instructions in an earlier post.

This time I did it as another of the afternoon communication session with the group of German teachers. Again, this was met with mixed feelings. Some of the teachers were very happy and saw the potential for the game with their students. As this was what they had been asking for all week I decided to make the discussion section at the end of the game about the different applications of the game for their students. I thought this worked really well, some of the teachers saw it as an application for social sciences, others an exercise in trade and economics and some even as an engineering project. In this respect I was very happy with the way the afternoon turned out. Other teachers however, felt that it was a silly game for children. You win some, you lose some.

Here is how the game turned out.

Mozambique went for the jugular from the start. They seemed to get it immediately and went after scissors and were very reluctant to relinquish any paper. Some very shrewd business being done. They also made great use of their extra man power. So much so that when they had used all their paper they just sat back and watched the rest of the world work. Although they did eventually lose a team member as the world bank (one of the teachers who specialises in economics) got so sick of being bullied by America that she resigned so one of the Mozambique team offered to step up to the task. It didn't do them much damage though.

India went a bit renegade and although there were expressly told that all items must be cut with a pair of scissors they seemed to manage the whole production process without them. Although I did have to confiscate a swiss army knife from their table. Full credit to them for making their products with out scissors and still getting them past the scrutiny of the world bank!

Brazil on the other hand, even with scissors lacked any kind of finesse of production.

Japan and the USA both struggled with having only 2 team members and no paper. They seemed to be relying on the belief that there was going to be some economic calculation that led them to get extra points at the end. Also they were either unwilling to trade scissors for paper or the other countries simply got the better of them. America also seemed to think the other countries were picking on them, could it be true??

Interestingly none of the countries used the money that they were given to trade with. Although Japan had some very nice products which in our game meant very little but did lead into one of the discussions about how to develop the game for different areas of study. Perhaps by allowing higher quality good to be sold at a higher price.

Finally, it was suggested that Mozambique should not have been allowed to be the world bank and were accused of creative accounting by America. However we worked out that Americans 'have big shoulders' and were walking past the bank rubbing off numbers.... deliberate or not we will never know but the winners stood out from the start and I was assured that the maths was accurate!

Mozambique coming in far ahead of the rest of the world and despite their big shoulders America came in bottom of the pile.

Brighton Quiz

Here is a small Quiz about Brighton I made to get the German teachers out and about to see the city. It would have been nice if we could have done it together as a group and made a bit of a tour out of it but unfortunately there was no time.

Give it a try your self.


From the Friends Meeting House walk down Middle street towards the sea front.

1. There is a place of worship on Middle Street first opened in 1875 before the first Catholic and Methodist churches in Brighton. What religion is it for?
2. Keep walking to the sea-front. Why do children not build sand castles on the Beach in Brighton?
3. On the sea-front if you look to your right you can see the remains of the West Pier. It was destroyed in 2004 but what happened to it?
4. If you look to your left you can see what used to be called the Palace Pier. It has a different name now. What is it called?
5. There is a green, do-nut shaped sculpture next to Brighton Pier, donated  by the mayor of Naples. It has shapes cut into it, but what are the shapes?
6. Walk towards Brighton Pier and you will pass another sculpture called the Kiss Wall. Where is it? (Take a picture of yourself next to it) Why do you think it is called the kiss wall?
7. Standing under the clock on Brighton Pier and looking across the road what buildings can you see?
8. If you cross the road towards the Old Stein (carefully please, Brighton drivers are terrible) in the centre of the Old Stein Gardens is a fountain. What sea creatures are part of it?
9. Also in the Old Stein Gardens is a statue of a man from Ipswich, what is his name and why was he important enough to have a statue built for him?
10. At the north end of the gardens near the bus stops is a marble monument. What is it commemorating?
11. Turn left and walk towards the pavilion gardens and go through the Indian Gate. Why is it called the Indian Gate?
12. What buildings are in the Pavilion Gardens and what are they used for?
13. Walk through the Gardens and onto North Street, where can you get a bus to from North Street?
14. Walk up North Street, at the cross roads with Queens Road there is a clock tower but which Queen has her picture on it?
15. To your left is a large shopping mall – an excellent place to buy presents for your teachers. What is the name of it?