I know QR codes have been around for a while, but I don’t think we can discount the power of the code. There are literally thousands of ways we could use QR codes in the classroom, motivating and engaging students. In my opinion, the best part about QR Codes is that they have the power to give students an authentic audience, which is the most rewarding and engaging for students.
Here are a couple of things we’ve done in our room:
We have a select number of books in our classroom (picture books for the most part), that have a QR code attached to the front. Students read and recorded themselves reading this book. I then uploaded this recording to my website (although you can upload to a site like Soundcloud or others), and then made a QR code linked to this recording. This did two things for my kids…it got them reading with a purpose, engaging them big time using the technology, as well as giving the students an audience. Yes, the audience was just our class, but I can tell you that it made a huge impact. The students are always wanting to create new audio books for our class library.
In 3rd grade, we research world communities, with a primary focus on culture. At the beginning of the year, students were researching China. I had students research China’s culture and find three of the most interesting facts they could. They then used a QR Code Creator to enter their facts, they created the code, and we printed them. We posted the facts outside in the hallway. Our class went on a QR Code Adventure of China, discovering facts their classmates found, and another 3rd-grade class scanned our codes, as well. The students were extremely proud that other kids in their grade level were learning from their information.
Listed below are a few sites on ideas on how to use QR Codes, as well as a couple of the sites I use to create codes:
Some other ideas of how to use QR Codes:
*25 Ways to Use QR Codes
QR Code Builders:
*QR Stuff– A bit more dynamic code creator.
*Code Generator– A simple code creator.
Here’s a TED-Ed video with a few more ideas using QR Codes.
If you have ideas, please share them in the comments! 🙂
-Dan Mault
