QR Codes pt. 1

After going to an EdCamp (which I will do a post later on), in Harrisburg, I saw a session on QR Codes. At the time, I thought this couldn’t be done in a K-1 school. Then at Pete & C this past February in Hershey, I sat in another session on QR codes in an Elementary School. Now the light bulb went off! What if I take (borrow, steal, etc.) what I heard and saw, give it my own spin, and come up with a neat way to introduce QR codes at my school.

Now I would send this flyer home to families with an actual QR code to a work that their child did in class. If they couldn’t scan it, the flyer also included the link so they could still see their child’s work on a computer. I picked out a first grade class which needed to do a personal narrative writing. After discussing with the teacher my concept, we came up with a (tooting my own horn) cool project. The first graders would write a piece on why they should be selected for student of the year. I would then take their photo, superimpose it on a fake cover of Time magazine, record their voice reading what they wrote, Blabberize it, then do a private upload to YouTube so I can have a mobile video clip embedded on a webpage. Then take that web address copy it onto Google URL shortener (goo.gl) get the QR code and paste it on a document specifically for that student. Yes, it does sound like a lot of steps but once you get in the groove of doing it it goes fast. The finished result… a flyer went home to every family in the class with their child’s individual QR code on it that would take them to a page like this: Student of the Year!