Please try this at home!

My mother is in the educational technology field.  She is often sharing really cool ideas from the workshops she conducts with public and private school teachers.  I got this idea from her and have recently tried it out.  I am very excited about it and so was my student, once he used it!

Have you noticed things that look like this on advertisements or products?



Well, that thing is called a QR code.  If you have the app, you can "read" this code and it will take you to a specific website.  Advertisers have figured out the marketing value of this. I've seen it on real estate signs in front of houses for sale.  You're shopping, see a new product, want more info about it, scan it and bam! information right there at your fingertips on your smartphone. I have also seen these codes at museums.

This has wonderful applications for portable, on-the-go education!  Here's how you can do this too.

1.  First decide how you want to use this.  I used Usborne's First Encyclopedia of Seas and Oceans because it is already internet-linked which means someone has already found usable websites with information appropriate for kids.  On my Mac, I went to the website provided (www.usborne-quicklinks.com), entered the book title as directed, and then entered the page number.  Several website options came up.  I picked one.

2.  While your computer is loading the website, download the FREE app for scanning to your smartphone, iPod or iPad.  We used the Scan app by QR Code City with 4.5 stars and 571 ratings.  If you'd rather have a paid app, those are available by doing a search for "qr code" at the App Store.

3.  I copied the URL and then went to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ which will look like this:

4.  Enter your URL in the box with http://.  Be sure you do not duplicate the http:// in the box.  If you do, you will get codes that do not work (and I'm sure you can guess how I figured that out).

5. Now click the Generate! button.  And this is what you will get:

6.  On a Mac, clicking on the black and white picture will take it to a single page so it can be printed without all the other stuff on the page.  The way my printer works, I was able to print two codes on one side, turn the paper over and then two codes on the other side.

7.  Test the codes to make sure they work.  I did not test every code after the first couple because I was pretty confident they'd all work.

8.  I cut the codes out and taped them in the Seas and Oceans book where I wanted Caleb to be able to scan them.  If you didn't want to tape the codes into the book, you could save them to a Word document with the page number next to the code.  Or you could just print them out like I mentioned above and write the page numbers underneath the codes.

I was able to create 8 codes, including two mess-ups in about an hour.  This included searching for other websites not included on the Usborne pages.  I fully anticipate this will go faster the next time because the learning curve isn't that steep.

Caleb wasn't too thrilled when I downloaded the Scan app onto his iPod.  However, after he scanned the first code he declared it to be "Awesome!"  It certainly added a dimension to his reading and learning that had not been there before.  Plus, since he could do it on his iPod, he was mobile. All he needed was to be in a place that had wi-fi.  School at Starbucks? Oh yeah!  Chick-Fil-a?  Wonderful!  I don't have this app on my phone but if I really wanted mobility, with cell phone service, he could do this anywhere.

You can use these codes for anything.  If you are reading a Little House book, for a pre-reading activity, you can have your student scan a link that will take them to pictures of the current Laura Ingalls Wilder museums and places.  The same for maps of places that correlate with novels.  Or videos about indigenous peoples.  Really, the possibilities are only limited by your own imagination.

If you have older students, you could assign them the task of doing all this for technology experience/credit.

If you try this out, please let me know how it worked for you!

Observations on what I am reading now.

Please excuse the lateness of my post; my goal is for new posts to publish at the time of my birth, 2:25 am.  The subtitle of my blog says it's about life, sometimes, and sometimes, life gets in the way of blog posting.

Reading Roll, Jordan, Roll has been very thought provoking.  I wonder how the author's belief in Marxism is occluding the factual presentation of the truth.  He uses lots of Marxist code words: "ruling classes,""infected," "insurrection," "bourgeois" is used frequently, of course, "respect . . . the laboring class,"and the typical classifications that Marxists must make to distinguish people from each other.

There was also a large section on the religious history.  Many slaves were Baptists, and after emancipation, many more flocked to Baptist churches.  My pastor is studying the history of Baptists and so far, he has not read about this aspect of Baptist history.  I hope his text discusses that because I am looking for some balance in the presentation of this topic.

My other current non-fiction read is throwing me for a loop, big time.  I have to stop reading occasionally because I feel like I need to take a shower.  And I've come to a conclusion - if I have to believe what Mary Kassian has presented as an overview of feminist thought, I am certainly NOT a feminist.  I cannot believe that "marriage was a set-up; wives and homemakers existed solely to cater to men's pleasure; wives are merely [chattel]" (p. 151).  I cannot believe that "no absolute standard of truth and definition exist" (p. 150).  The words the feminists themselves use make it clear feminism is their new religion; they are rejecting patriarchy and therefore rejecting God.  (Just to be clear, I reject a patriarchy that says it's okay for men to domineer and abuse women, that men expect women to be submissive but then don't love their wives sacrificially like the next verse says.)

A lady named Davis wrote a book called The First Sex who actually believed that "men-who were genetic mutations of women" (p. 119).  I agree that men can be baffling but mutants?  This gave me a great laugh.  Kassian devoted an entire chapter to Davis's book.  I'm not going to link it but if you want to read more of its drivel, I'm sure you can easily find it on google.

Kassian also discusses feminist theologians: "In spite of the drastic deviance from traditional theology, feminist theologians did not see themselves as deviating from biblical truth" (p. 116-7).  "If a doctrine or text did not agree with woman's experience of oppression and quest for liberation, then it was freely revised" (p. 118).  If you revise, you deviate.  That's some chutzpah!

Reading The Feminist Mistake has been a struggle, and I am certainly learning a lot.  But if it were easy, everyone would be reading it.

The tie that binds these two books together Marxism.  Many feminist theories stemmed from Marxism while Genovese writes from a Marxist view point.  One thing for certain, my eyes have been opened to the far reaching impacts of both these ideologies.

Imagine me in bed with the covers pulled up to my eyes, whispering, "I see Marxists."

Odds and Ends . . .

*For the first time ever in my adult life, I am tempted to buy a comic book; not just one but maybe 95 to be exact.  That's right, I've become a huge Walking Dead tv show fan and the show is based on, not a book, but comics.  However, reading the comments on this "spoiler" article for season 3 has made me reconsider.  I am not even close to the reading demographic for the comic, yet I am intrigued by the commenters' references to the characters and how they are in the comic compared to the tv show.  Of course, if I do venture into this I will share with y'all!  


In discussing this with my dear Husband, he begged me not to - read the comics that is.  And you know why! He didn't want me saying "That wasn't in the comic!"  




*I just read that Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, co-wrote the screenplay which opened volcanically on March 23.  That makes me very happy because the movie will be closer to the book, hopefully no ruination!  Many who have seen it have commented that the  movie does stick as close to the book as possible which is even better news!   However, I am not sure when I will go see it, probably the second or third week its out - I'm in no rush because then the magic will be over.  After I see it, I'll get to the next two books.  (I do realize most of the free world already knows about these books but I'm linking for those like me, who come late to the party!)  


Sadly, I just discovered I was reading the third book second which helps clear up some massive confusion.  Thanks Mike Evans for saying that on the radio and helping me catch my mistake!


During the weekend after it's release, we heard several radio shows discussing the movie.  It made me realize how wonderfully this series would fit into History and Government.  I cannot wait for Caleb to read these books and then discuss it with him; however, he is only 10 so we will have to wait a bit.  There are some really hard concepts and themes in these books and I want him to be mature and thoughtful enough to discuss them.  Might be asking too much but a mom can always hope!


And I started Catching Fire on Friday night (4/6/12).  I went to bed early in order to read, a little, and the next thing I know it's 11:30 p.m.  It's a great book, so far!




*A while back I finished A Dance with Dragons, the fifth volume in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice.  According to the website, Martin plans two more volumes, but many fans are concerned he might die before finishing them, not a happy thought for those who like closure to their series! All that to say, we got the Season 1 Game of Thrones DVDs and I will be watching those soon.  *SPOILER on (highlight over text if you want to read)*  It's hard to get geared up to watch those since I know Sean Bean as Eddard Stark meets an unfortunate and early demise. *Spoiler off*


*Grandpa needs to hurry up and finish A Princess of Mars so we can go see the John Carter movie.  It's gotten great reviews from people I know who have seen it, despite the critics' panning it.

Of Bookstores . . . .

For the past 25 years, ever since I met my Dear Husband and we have been traveling to visit his family, we have driven by Givens Books.  It sits on the corner of a busy intersection in Salem, Virginia.  The store is on the right corner and we are always making a left turn there.  I've wanted to stop in that bookstore every time we've driven past it.  I know I've mentioned that to said Dear Husband on numerous occasions.

Well, he finally heard me!  He surprised me by first telling me he needed air in the tires at the gas station next door and then he pulled right up to that front door pictured there.  He told me I could take as much time as I wanted!

And we all went in!  It was jam-packed with books - old, new, current, ancient.  They were stacked on each other, on the shelves, on top of each other on the shelves, in large piles on the floor; a  book lover's dream, a biblioholic's bar.  I was in heaven, but not breathing too deeply because, well, ya know, old books can sometimes be, well, a little like old ladies who forget to bathe and wear moth-ball perfumed clothes.  You still love that little old lady, and you just accept her as she is because she is filled with wisdom and treasures.

The first aisle I wondered down had books on England, all kinds of non-fiction.  Being the huge Jane Austen/Elizabeth Gaskill fan that I am, I snagged G. M. Trevelyan's English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries Chaucer to Queen Victoria.  Trevelyan was a Master of Trinity College and the Late Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge.  This little treasure was published in 1942!  I don't even need to read the book because the best part is a wonderful, color map of England with all the counties labeled.   A couple shelves over, I found An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England by Venetia Murray, no Cambridge scholar but who can resist the Regency period - alas, not I.  My Dear Husband found The Jane Austen Book Club for me which I had, surprisingly, never heard of!   Are you sensing a theme in my selections?

I browsed the other sections and found a couple of books that will be handy in our homeschooling: The Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia and the Usborne Internet-linked Introduction to Asia.


I also found a section with college textbooks.  It seems Givens does a lot of business with the local community college and business school.  I love to look at the literature ones, just to see if the short stories and plays in anthologies have changed much over the course of 20+ years.  Interesting enough, they haven't!  I picked up Literature and the Writing Process because it had the entire script of M. Butterfly, something I have never read but want to.  My all-time favorite short story is Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and it's in there too; honestly, no anthology is complete without it.

The last book I got was the New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha.  For those that don't know and I had to look this up too, just to be sure, the Apocrypha are "texts which were included in some canonical versions of the Bible at some point, and other texts of a Biblical nature which have never been canonical."  How we got the Bible we read is very fascinating to me and this will help me learn more about that.

Just in case you are wondering, I did pick up several volumes only to then put them back down; it is a sad moment when you realize you just cannot buy all that you want.  There was a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea but it was a little too water-warped for even this intrepid used book buyer.

During my check-out, I was pleased to be able to chat with the owner, Mr. Chip Givens.  He was so delightful and I really enjoyed talking with him, about all kinds of things.  Plus, he had some pretty funny, clean jokes!

If you'd like to take a virtual tour of Givens Books, you can search their stacks here or here. All in all, a very productive and fun little stop!  I hope I don't have to wait 25 more years for another book-shopping adventure!