shortener. Paste a long url into the box, click the Shorten button, and your shortened url will magically appear. To QR code this shortened url, simply click on Details to find the QR code for this url. Bitly at http://bitly.com is similar – click Info Page + after shortening. Note: Use the smallest amount of text or content when you make your code (url shorteners such as Bitly really help). The more text, the more complicated the code which leads to longer ‘translate’ times. If you want to use the code in a document, save or copy the image. Once on your computer, it is simply a picture that can be put into presentations, documents, web pages, or blogs.


Class Tools http://www.classtools.net has a QR Treasure Hunt Generator http://www.classtools.net/QR/index.php that you would find extremely easy to use. Just type in a


QR Center). As a teacher, I’m sure you can come up with hundreds of ways of using this idea in your classroom. Here are a few to get you started:


• Students can check their own work if a question written in Word is accompanied by a QR Code that contains the correct answer.


• Set up a scavenger hunt within your classroom or the library or the playground. At the 1st


location, post a question


with 3 possible answers, each accompanied by a QR Code. Translating the correct answer/code will lead them to the location of the next question. Or have a sheet with 10 questions, each accompanied by a QR Code that would lead students to a web site that will help them construct the correct answer.


• Easily get your youngsters to the right web site by making QR Codes for 10 different grade-level urls on individual card stock (easiest to make the same repeated QR code on one sheet, then cut apart for a classroom set), laminate, hole- punch, and gather on rings that can be left at each computer. Students simply show one of the codes to the webcam and Voila! They are at the correct site, by themselves, without you typing in a url 30 times!


• Create QR Codes to put on library or classroom books that would lead students to a book trailer, or book review, or to find more information on the book (e.g. AR points, reading level, link to the author’s web site, etc.)


series of questions (5 or more) and their answers. This tool will create a QR code for each question (these are text files – you won’t need Internet access to read), AND set up an answer sheet. Cut out the codes (leave some white space around the code for easier reading) and place around your classroom/school, then let kids loose to read the coded questions and be the first team with the most correct answers in the available time. Consider letting teams of students create the questions and QR codes. A great way to show what they’ve learned!


What can I do with a QR Code?


YouTube video: Using QR Codes in the Classroom MACULJOURNALV


The concept is so very simple: Create questions or answers. Turn them into QR codes. Make the codes available and let students ‘read’ with any available mobile device (or bring to one computer- with-webcam station that you have designated as the


| Winter 2011-12 |


• Video class experiments or directions, upload, and then post the QR Code for that video on your classroom web site for absent students to access. This makes it easy for you and for the student to catch up.


• Post contact information on cards for field trip students in case they get separated from the group.


• Paste a QR Code to classroom equipment that will take students to a video explaining how to use it.


Is this cool, or what?


Marilyn Western is the 2008 MACUL Teacher of the Year, a former member of the MACUL Board of Directors, a Discovery Educator Network (DEN) scholar, and a Mt. Pleasant Public Schools 5th/6th grade computer lab teacher. Outside of the classroom, she has worked as the 1998-99 MDE Technology Using Educator on Loan, a MI Champions course designer and instructor, a technology trainer for Clare Gladwin RESD, Gratiot Isabella RESD and Bay Arenac ISD, a national presenter for the Bureau of Education & Research, and a district Tech Guru. She can be reached via mwestern@edzone.net.


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