QR codes in EDU

During the Laptop Institute, I had the opportunity to hear Jeff Utech present on the relevance of QR codes in society and he has predicted that 2011 will be the year of the QR code.  Now I must admit that I've been puzzled by these 2 dimensional barcodes, but it wasn't until Jeff asked the audience to discuss how we could use QR codes that I started to see the light.  Fortunately, I was sitting near @sarahhanawald and @mmhoward  discussing the potential and experimenting with these little buggers.  We came up with some neat ideas but it wasn't until much later in the day when I had my Eureka moment. I've been giving it lots of thought ever since and have come up with a few ideas which I would like to share. But more importantly, I would like all of us to share potential uses of QR codes in edu via twitter.  @sarahhanawald suggested we use the hashtag #QRinEDU and I think it is a fantastic idea.

   

#QRinEdu examples:

A link to your homepage on admissions materials.

A teaser in an announcement to introduce the School's new mobile site.

Image credit: http://vampirelabs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/green-question-mark.jpg

Or how about using QR codes on signs at athletic events so spectators can download rosters & go to team pages. It's green and it can provide considerably more content than spectators can imagine.

So, how will you use them?

Use hashtag #QRinEdu

Create, Reflect, Revise

This is a big summer for St. Christopher's School.  We have a 1:1 program launching in the fall, our school will be celebrating its centennial, and we will be opening the Luck Leadership Center in January 2012. So in the midst of all of the excitement, I find it is critical that as we create new and engaging activities for our boys, we must also be mindful to reflect and revise as needed.

A true master teacher/learner will reflect on the outcomes of their lesson or activity and will take the time to revise the approach to maximize learning.  At a recent PD activity on Google docs for the faculty, I opted to share my notes with the attendees rather than give them hard copies.  In so doing, I was able to augment the notes with their ideas and suggestions after the class.  It was quite easy to amend the notes and best of all, I didn't have to resend an updated version because the document was shared. Having done this 2x and with several more PD sessions remaining throughout the summer, my latest reflection has prompted me to give the participants editing capabilities so we can truly benefit from our collective efforts.

We've been using this approach in our tech dept meetings to collect minutes and document action items so why not extend it to the classroom. It's like a wiki on steroids with the benefits of concurrent users.

While most of us are in the business of creating, let's not forget to take the time to reflect and revise.