Some things take time. Have a look at this request on the H5P forum for example: farrisimin wished for a word search puzzle and a crossword puzzle back in 2015. Last year, one of his wishes was granted. Jithin Thankachan contributed Find the Words to the pool of H5P content types. But what about a crossword puzzle? Well, there’s only so much that software developers can do in their free time. But what if someone funded some of the work that’s required to build such a content type for H5P?
Enter LTC, a company in Hamburg, Germany that did just that. But not just that! They also want to share the result with the H5P community. Guess what, here it is! You will have to wait a little before the H5P core team finds some time to review and release H5P Crossword to the H5P Hub. However, feel free to download the demo content from this page and to upload it to your platform in order to install the required library. Please note: An admin will have to do that for you if you lack the rights to manage H5P libraries.
Features in a nutshell
- Allows you to create a pool of clues and words that will be used to generate random crosswords or have the words at fixed positions
- Is not limited to using A-Z, but uses uppercase characters only
- Allows you to optionally use a background image
- Allows you to add a special solution word
- Provides you with an option to add extra clues: text, image, audio or video
- Adjusts the layout based on the horizontal space given
- Supports xAPI, e.g. for transferring results to a host system’s gradebook
- Supports saving and restoring the current state (if activated in the H5P plugin settings)
- Has keyboard support on the grid and additional text input fields for improved accessibility
- Supports readspeakers (fairly well)
- Has an optional instant feedback mode and the usual H5P views for results and the solution
Some more insight
I already demonstrated a beta version recently during my monthly live stream on twitch. I am pretty sure that I explained some of the things that I just mentioned briefly 🙂
https://youtu.be/Vown6nidXdk
Future development
The future development of H5P Crossword is not set in stone. If you have any ideas for improving the content type, please leave a comment or rather get in touch with LTC directly – as I mentioned, this was contract work. But please be aware that the development will depend on the availability of resources (free time and/or funding). Speaking of resources … You can find the source code on github and do changes yourself.