Hot Potatoes Tutorials

Three years on Zidisha now!
Since 8 December 2013, the date of my first disbursed loan on Zidisha.Inc, the lending funds have been recycled into USD $521 worth of loans. Here is a breakdown of the number of loans funded by country.

Facelift Responsive v1.3 (with Responsive Masher), is the successor of css3_Facelift.
Get Facelift Responsive from the Add-ons

 
Another wonderfully innovative application of HotPotatoes many of us don't even think of on a daily basis - sign language.

Dr. Rachel McKee ☍, Senior Lecturer at Deaf Studies and Research Unit at the School of Linguistics and Applied Languages, and Edith Paillat ☍, Language Technology Specialist of the Language Learning Centre at Victoria University of Wellington share the challenges and rewards of creating courseware to teach New Zealand Sign Language. Welcome, Rachel and Edith! And many thanks for taking the time to be interviewed.

1. Tell us a bit about your background

Rachel: I teach New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Studies at Victoria University, Wellington. NZSL was legally made an official language in 2006, after an earlier history of being an 'underground' language. Teaching and researching NZSL has raised awareness that it is indeed a real language, that the Deaf community now uses openly and proudly. I'm a hearing person fluent in NZSL, and I work with a small team of Deaf teachers who are the main language models for learners.

What are they and how to avoid them?

I. Code, Tech, and Bad habits

#1 Copy-Paste

By far the most common mistake people make. Copy-Pasting, especially from MSWord, in any of the HotPotatoes retains the original formatting. As a result text that breaks to the next line also breaks in HotPotatoes because the line breaks are converted to <br /> tags. This may not be a big deal with text, but it does break the functionality when you Copy-Paste HTML or javascript code to insert, for example audio and video.

The Hot Potatoes Add-ons on this site are all 'Facelifted'. Some discussion I've had suggested that there may be people who would prefer the add-ons with the old look of HotPotatoes, and I've decided to ask, although I'm reluctant to maintain two versions of each add-on. Hence, the poll.

Comments are welcome below the poll form.