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).
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!
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