Nik Peachey continues his digital teaching series by exploring how QR codes can be used to create mobile worksheets. He provides simple steps to help you create them, plus a fun lesson activity download too!
Many teachers underestimate the degree to which they already use technology, particularly in their lesson preparation. Most teachers reading this are probably familiar with word processing tools such as MS Word, Google Docs or Apple’s Pages. Most probably use websites as the source of content for reading or viewing activities. Sadly though, as soon as they need to take those resources into the classroom they print them up and start photocopying.
Taking a digital document and transferring it to paper to give to a classroom full of students (most of whom own some form of digital device that they could be using) to read and manipulate seems like an act of madness when there is a much better way to do this.
The first step to this process is getting your documents online. You can do that by using either DropBox or Google Drive or any of the other online storage platforms that allow you to share selective documents publicly.
Another simple alternative is to convert them to simple webpages and you can do this in minutes with telegra.ph. Just give your page a title add your name and then copy paste in your text.
It’s simple to add links to other web-based resources from the page and you can also add images or embed video from YouTube to these documents just by adding a link. Here’s a quick example. Then once you have the link to either your page or your document you just need to create a QR code for it. QR codes enable anyone with a mobile device and a free scanning app to scan the code which then opens the file or link on their mobile device.
There are lots of free QR code scanners available for mobile devices. Some of the best I have used are i-nigma and Tapmedia. Creating QR codes is simple. Just go to QR Code Generator click on URL and paste in your code. This then coverts the link into QR code image. Then you just save the image and add it to a presentation, webpage or document to enable students to download digital copies of your worksheets and materials.
Now your students can get any of your worksheets onto their mobile device in minutes and you can save hours of wasted time queuing at the photocopier and trying to unblock paper jams!
You can also use a QR code generator to make short texts, questions, sentences or even single words available on students’ devices even when they don’t have a connection. Just copy and paste your text into the text section of the QR code generator and then save the code for your students to scan.
The code generator converts the text into binary code so the scanner reads the text without the need for a connection.
Scan this example:
Using these simple tools you should now be able to make all of your worksheets available to your students on their devices and save hours of photocopying time.
To take this idea further, why not try this ‘Find Someone Who’ QR code lesson activity with your students!
Download the Find Someone Who QR lesson activity
Don’t miss Nik’s previous article on the benefits of crowdsourcing in the classroom.