Fill-in-the-Blanks Tool
The Fill-in-the-Blank (FITB) tool generates online FITB exercises via a simple plain-text document. This tool can be accessed at: http://studio.colby.edu/studio/fitb.php.
System requirements
In order to be able to use the generated FITB exercise on your website, your web server must have PHP support! If you are not sure whether that's the case, check with your host before proceding. If you host does not support PHP, you will not be able to use the generated FITB exercies in your webpages. As an alternative, you may look for similar Javascript solutions online.
Formatting your plain-text document
- To begin a plain-text document, open Notepad or TextEdit if you own a Windows or Mac machine, respectively.
- In TextEdit, go to PREFERENCES. Under NEW DOCUMENT > FORMAT, select PLAIN TEXT. (see screen shot below)
- Under OPEN AND SAVE > PLAIN TEXT FILE ENCODING, select UTF-8 for both OPENING and SAVING-FILES. (see screen shot below)
Creating your plain-text document
- Create a new file. Type each item in its own line, i.e., separate each item by a SINGLE carriage-return. Each item, separated by carriage-returns, will have a number prepended automatically. If you wish to leave an item unnumbered, type a hash (#) at the beginning of the line.
- Enclose answers, which are to be replaced by blanks, with square-brackets.
- If using diacritic characters, type them in character entity form (i.e., ë for ë).
- Below is an example of a text file, and the corresponding online exercise generated by the FITB tool:
Plain-text file:
Punishment and [aversive] control are common.
...a story which pleases me by its [na&ieuml;veté] -- that is, by its unconscious [ingenuousness].
#Physically, the [border] is harder to cross.FITB Form:
1. Punishment and control are common.
2. ...a story which pleases me by its -- that is, by its unconscious .
Physically, the is harder to cross.
Generating an FITB form
- Once your plain text file is complete, go to the FITB tool at
http://studio.colby.edu/studio/fitb.phpand upload your file. - Below the generated preview of your FITB exercise, source-code will be output in a text-area. The source-code consists of two parts, a basic CSS stylesheet, and the core written in PHP.
Creating a compatibile .php document
- Open a new or existing web-document (within Macromedia Dreamweaver, for example) and save it with a .php extension.
- Set the character set (or text encoding) to UTF-8. To do this, find the tag in the head of the web-document, and set charset=utf-8. (see below for illustration) This step ensures that all diacritic characters will be displayed correctly.
charset=utf-8">
Including the FITB source code in your webpage
- Within the generated FITB source-code, find the PHP section enclosed within tags. Copy this section (including the tags) and paste it into your web-document between the and tags where you want the FITB exercise to appear. If your webpage already contains PHP code where you want to include the FITB exercise, paste the PHP section of the generated source-code without the tags.
The CSS stylesheet contained at the beginning of the generated source-code between the tags is optional and may be pasted into the head of your webpage or included as part of an external stylesheet for your website.
Edited on Jan 19 2007 03:35PM by Nikolai Barnwell
