QR Codes

I have never thought about using QR Codes in the classroom until I attended a conference in Baltimore. Of course, I sat there thinking, "Why didn't I think of this?" I tend to have a go-getter personality, so I sat at this conference contemplating how I was going to use QR Codes in my classroom. Since then, I have developed a QR Code job chart for next school year and how students could use them for getting the homework. Currently, students are testing, which means no homework this week, so we aren't able to test out the QR Codes for homework, yet.

However, next week my class is performing a play for the school, Red Writing Hood. It is a cute fractured fairytale play, that incorporates many of the fairytales and nursery rhymes all in one play. The children all have a part in the play and had to memorize their lines. Wanting to make this small 20 minute play seem like the real deal, today we worked on autobiographies to post on the bulletin board in the hallway. But instead of posting the actual autobiography, I taught the students how to create a QR Code that we will post by their picture and part.

At first the students, were a little puzzled as to if this would actually work. So, I created a demo QR Code using http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ to link to our school website. I projected this code onto the Activboard took out my iPad and scanned the code. Some of the students were a bit questionable as to if this would actually work, could the iPad really scan off the Activboard? Within a couple seconds, everyone was viewing the school website off of my iPad. Hooray, I had won the students over on creating their own QR Code.

The students worked eagerly to write their rough draft, which I approved for the next draft. Tomorrow we will finish our final drafts, take pictures, and create QR Codes for the bulletin board. This will be the first time the students have used QR Codes in the class and I am excited. How do you use them in your classrooms?