In our course, Module 4, Music as a language, students have to deal with a lot of new concepts on basic music theory. A crossword exercise can be a good way to recall some of these.

After opening Hot Potatoes and clicking on the JCross potato, we see the standard interface, a grid, in which we can start creating a crossword exercise. We can start by adding a title to the exercise on the leftmost pane, labeled Title.

Then, we can click on the third button from the right on the toolbar, to create a grid layout automatically, from a list of words that we provide.

We can then enter each word or phrase on a separate line, similar to the following example, and then click on the Make the grid button. We can also define the maximum grid size, in this case the default of 20 × 20 letters. When we export the exercise as HTML to include it in Moodle, this will automatically be adjusted to the size of the words in the exercise.

When the grid is ready, we would get something like this:

Next, we need to define the clues, just like in any crossword exercise, by clicking on the button Add Clues, below the title. We will then get a list of the words in our crosswords exercise.

Here, we just need to click on each word and add the clue in the field provided, clicking on the OK button adjacent to the field after specifying each clue. We can also add pictures, URLs, or other media (videos and Flash) to the clues by using the Insert menu. Let's look at how to add an image.

For the word CLEF, we could insert a picture of a bass clef, so that students can see a clue for the word. To do this, we need to navigate to Insert | Picture | Picture from Local File and then select an image of a clef from our computer. Again, remember that we need to always keep files for a single project in one folder to avoid images disappearing when the exercise is used on different computers or on the Web. We should first save the Hot Potatoes project in a folder, and then create an images folder where we can put all of the images for this exercise.

So, after selecting a picture of a bass clef from our images folder, we would get the following configuration window:

After we click on the OK button, our crossword exercise is ready, with the HTML code for the image already inserted.

We just need to export it by pressing the F6 key or by clicking on the button to the left of the downwards red arrow on the toolbar. We can then save it in our project folder, and preview it in the browser.

With JMix we can create jumbled phrases or words, and students will have to put the jumbled parts into the correct order. In our course, Module 5, Being a musician, students have to write about their favorite artists. We can build on this by creating a JMix exercise (or by letting students create one) that works as a review for some of the facts that they identified about these artists (again, this is an incentive for the colleagues to read what others have done).

After clicking on the JMix potato, we can start by adding a title and saving our JMix file.

Then, in the Main sentence form, we can insert a sentence separated by breaks. For example, to break up the sentence "Richard Bona was born in the Cameroon in 1967" into word segments, you would type this into the Main sentence box as shown in the following screenshot:

Note that, in this case the phrase could be written in two ways, so there was the need to add an alternative sentence so that students can provide either answer and still be marked correct.

We can also add pictures and other multimedia elements to the title. For example, in this case we can add a photo of Richard Bona, again stored in a folder called images. Next, click at the end of the title that we added in the Title window and then go to Insert | Picture | Picture from Local File and select the photo from the images folder on our computer. To add the photo below the title, we can add a break tag, as shown in the following screenshot:

Finally, we need to export the exercise as HTML. For this type of exercise, we can export in two formats—with the drag-and-drop functionality (Ctrl + F6)or without the drag-and-drop functionality (F6). We can also use the exportbuttons on the toolbar. As an example, here's the screenshot of an exercise with drag-and-drop functionality:

Richard Bona's picture source: RV's agen (2006). Richard Bona 1.jpg. Retrieved October 10, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Bona-1.jpg

Hot Potatoes produces an HTML file that we can add as an activity in Moodle 2.5 if we have the plugin installed. We just need to upload the HTML file together with the images and other elements that we used in the exercise (for example, Richard Bona's picture) to our course files area, and then point to the HTML file from the Hot Potatoes activity settings. Let's try it with the JCross exercise that we just created. We should upload the HTML file generated by the Hot Potatoes software, along with all of the multimedia files that we attached (in this case, an images folder and its contents).

We can, for example, send a ZIP file of the HTML and the folder, and later unzip it in Moodle.

This resource should point to the .htm file.

We will get a result similar to the following screenshot:

One of the advantages of integrating Hot Potatoes in this way, rather than just as a resource, has to do with Moodle keeping logs of students' activity in the exercise, which can be of help if we want to see what they've been doing. Another advantage is the easy way of creating quizzes, when compared to Moodle's quiz engine.