Exploring QR Codes in Education

Keen to continuing researching the use of new technologies in supporting students learning, I am particularly keen to look at the technologies which they are already familiar with including smart phones. Having entered the world of the iphone a couple of years ago I have since seen a huge growth in the number of students with some kind of smart phone. Although I have been aware of QR codes for a while I have never stopped to consider their potential uses in education until stumbling across some articles whilst doing some research for my AST role.

So what are QR codes?

A QR code is a barcode like logo which can be scanned by smart phones, tablets etc. These codes can contain a variety of information which they direct the user to once scanned, including weblinks and text.

There are already a variety of interesting articles on the use of QR codes in education:

QR codes in education

Can QR codes enhance student learning?

QR Codes in the classroom

QRC101 is an excellent resource site focusing on the use of QR codes in education with a whole series of links to articles, videos and presentations. There is a huge amount of information here and I have only just started exploring it.

I also found this very interesting ‘critical’ overview of QR Codes and Education (http://itbabble.com/2011/09/03/qr-codes-and-education/) which sparks debate and questions the value of QR codes and whether they are gimmicky rather than adding to the educational value. A very interesting read and something I am keen to respond to more when I have tried it for myself.

So where do I go from here?

I am keen to start trying out QR codes in the classroom, but don’t want to ‘force’ them into all my teaching so I am going to start with just a focus on the VI form and thinking about how I can use the codes to help the students connect more with their
learning and encourage them to read around the subject more. As a starting point I
have done the following:

(i) Year 12 – are currently working on river features along the course of the river and are going to be constructing A3 sheets for the Upper, Middle and Lower course with
detailed notes and diagrams on the formation of the associated features. QR
codes already embedded on the sheets links to photographs of the features.
These will also be used for homework to encourage students to describe features
from a photograph.

(ii) Year 13 are looking at the sustainable management of rainforests and tomorrow’s lesson will focus on looking at a range of strategies that can be used. It is important that the students become more critical and start to evaluate the strategies and QR codes have been embedded in the notes sheets that will be used in the lesson to a
range of articles providing different points of view on a number of management
strategies.

I have also created an interactive display for my Year 11 form’s careers board with details of VI forms and colleges with QR codes providing direct links to prospectuses and websites from the display itself.

Other more general ideas to explore for the term ahead:-

• · Interactive Geography in the News Wall display – pictures and headlines of major geographical news stories with associated QR codes linking to online news video clips, websites and further images.
• · Interactive Revision Guides – to help ensure students have a fully integrated and interactive revision programme at GCSE. Current revision guides updated to include QR codes with links to the online resources, specific podcasts and where relevant model answers to exam questions.
• Further Extension links in presentations used in A’level lessons to encourage students to undertake further background reading.
• · Use of QR codes on information posters around school (thanks to mrjmutton for this idea)

A working list which will hopefully be updated as inspiration strikes!

There are undoubtedly a number of issues I am going to need to consider. What about students without smart phones? Am I getting over enthusiastic about something that will turn out to be just gimmicky? Or will it genuinely provide another way of encouraging students to interact and connect with their learning? I look forward to finding out!

02 Learn – The National Final – your chance to vote!

You may remember the feature I posted in Nov 2010 announcing the new O2 learn website, an innovate education initiative designed to celebrate the UK’s finest teaching and create a lasting learning resource to help young people achieve their ambitions. The website encouraged teachers to upload and share videos of their best lessons, with the aim of building Britain’s biggest classroom online and to give all young people, everywhere, from all backgrounds, access to inspiring teaching.

02 learn is now getting ready for the national final! Of all the teachers to have uploaded videos onto the website throughout the past year, judges have whittled it down to a shortlist of the best eight videos and you can now vote for your favourite on the O2 website. The public vote in conjunction with a judging panel will decide the winning teaching and school. The voting deadline is midnight on the 28th September and you have one vote! The winning teacher will receive £50,000 and their school £100,000. There alre also large monetary prizes for the second and third places.

Gav Thomspon, creater of O2 learn, said: “O2 learn celebrates the UK’s finest teachers and shares their great teaching with as many students as possible. We want to create a long-lasting, valuable learning resource for young people verywhere. The finalist videos are testament to the high quality, creative and innovative teaching that is happening in the classrooms all over the country.”

Twittertastic! – using Twitter in Education

Danny Nicholson has recently published a new blog post on his Whiteboard Blog, called “Ten Twitter Tips for Teachers“. Danny has written a short guide to Twitter for Teachers before, but as the name of his recent post suggests, here he provides 10 quick tips for people interested in getting started with twitter.

I often hear people being quite sceptical of twitter, but this is usually before they have actually tried it! I have been using twitter for about 3 years now and have found it invaluable for professional development and the reciprocal sharing of ideas and links with fellow educationalists not just from the UK but around the world. Give it a go and be amazed by the links and professional development opportunities it opens up. You can soon find people with simillar subject specific / pedagogical interests who you can follow!

Educational Use of Twitter

This blog post by Steve Wheeler of Plymouth University considers the use of Twitter a as a teaching tool – it includes an interesting “top 10 uses of twitter for education”. There are many other ideas and links to suggested ways of using Twitter in education on the EmergingEdTech website here.

A collaborative online book on Twitter for Teachers is also a growing resource for teachers keen to look at the potential of twitter.

Interactive Maths (1) – SMART Notebook™Maths Tools

The forthcoming Teaching and Learning session is focused on the use of ICT in maths and as part of this I will be adding a number of “Interactive Maths” posts to provide follow up information looking at the use of the following interactive technologies and the Maths curriculum:

1. SMART Maths Tools
2. SMART Response kits
3. SMART Document cameras in maths
4. Interactive Games – Content Generator and Tarsia.

INTERACTIVE MATHS (1) SMART Notebook™ MATHS TOOLS

This video clip from Smart Training and Professional Development provides a useful overview of how the SMART Notebook™ Maths toolkit works.

The SMART Notebook™ Maths toolkit includes the following tools:

Equations 

- Handwriting Recognition for mathematical symbols
- Equation solving
- Equation editing

Advanced shape Creation and Manipulation ToolsRegular – - -

- Polygon Tool
- Irregular Polygon Tool
- Advanced Shape Manipulation

Graphs
- Dynamic Graphing
- Custom Graph Builder

Texas Instruments™ Emulators
(launch TI-Nspire™, TI-SmartView™ 84 and TI-SmartView 73 software in notebook (note the TI Emulator software has to brought separately).

This video clip provides a useful look at the maths toolkit in action to support secondary maths:

A 30 day trial of the SMART Notebook Maths toolkit can be downloaded here. If you decide to purchase the add on, a number of licenses are available from one-computer to multiple computers from a range of suppliers of educational software.

Remember, there are measurement tools, including a ruler, protractor and compass which are now a standard part of SMART Notebook™ 10 and don’t require SMART Notebook™ Maths Tools as a separte add on.

SMART Document Camera and Art and Design

An interesting video with some suggestions for using a SMART Document camera in an art and design lesson to explore the elements of good composition.

Using a SMART Document camera

I am very interested at the moment in the use of the SMART Document camera in various curriculum areas. In the first of what hopefully will be a number of posts over the next term related to the use of the SMART Document camera (essentially a visualiser which integrates with ease with SMART Notebook on the SMART IWB range),  I will start by looking at what a SMART Document Camera is and think about just some of the possible uses of one in a classroom situation.

What is a SMART Document Camera?
The SMART document camera is basically a visualiser – it will show anything that is put underneath it. Unlike an old style OHP, the document camera provides a digital image and therefore anything put under it can be seen, including 3D objects, it can also be used for demonstrations.

How does it work and how simple is it to use?

Very simple and integrates easily with SMART notebook, whilst I don’t have experience of other visualisers, I know that one of the benefits of the SMART document camera is its ‘plug and play’ ease! As long as the computer has SMART notebook installed the camera, which connects via a USB port can quickly and easily be set up, making it very user friendly in lessons and for sharing between classrooms / departments.

The camera has a good zoom and an auto-focus function, giving a good quality image for using in teaching and learning opportunities. When used in conjunction with the many SMART notebook tools, such as the magic pen, highlighter, pen tools, camera tools etc.. it has great potential as an interactive teaching and learning tool.

Incorporating the SMART Document Camera in lessons:

There is a useful little video clip here from SMART Training and Professional Development with lots of little examples:

Some other ideas….

Excellent opportunities for AFL, including:

• modelling exam answers / technique; including the ability to de-construct / annotate answers clearly in front of a class
• share student work – student work can be put under the camera and peer assessment undertaken (been successfully used during exam time) – good for promoting collaborative learning.
• share good work / used to show examples of good presentation / re-work draft answer / comment on student answers.
• manipulate and reposition sentences / paragraphs / objects from a variety of manuscripts / documents / students work using the SMART notebook camera tools.

Other uses:

• projecting worksheets
• projecting images that can be captured and re-arranged using the board – e.g. for composition work in art and design
• can be used in conjunction with microscopes in science to project images for the whole class
• used to show demonstrations to the whole class, e.g. scientific experiments (enabling stills to be captured which can then be analysed and annotated (and used in revision!)
• project resources – e.g. textbooks for whole class scrutiny.

Some useful links and documents related to the use of visualisers in the classroom:

Visualisers – Secondary, Further and Higher Education Case Studies (Visualiser Forum)

Whiteboard Blog – Visualiser Presentation

Why would I use a classroom document camera? (many ideas for using a document camera in school settings)

Dream Teachers Competition

Seen the TV programme? Now enter the competition! YouTube and Jamie Oliver are looking for Britain’s Dream Teachers in their competition in which they are looking for teachers to help explain the concepts that students find hardest. Through liaison with a major exam board, they have come up with some of the topics that students find hardest in seven topic areas: Maths, English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography and History. All you need to do is video your idea for teaching the concept and upload it to the competition website!

The Prize?? There is prize for the best video in each of the subject categories – £3,000 for the teacher and £7,000 for the school!

Interested? See the website for more details and to see which topics for your subject area you need to base your video on. Full competition rules are also available on the site! Go for it!

The only problem is the deadline is very soon – all entries need to be uploaded before Tuesday 5th April!

Google Art Project

Last week Google launched their new Google Art Project. The Google team have joined forces with 17 major art museums across the globe. The project uses Google’s “Street-view” technology, enabling visitors to take a virtual walk through the galleries of museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Tate Britain in London. The paintings of the galleries have been captured in high-resolution enabling incredible clarity in close up analysis of paintings which before required a trip around the globe to see in such detail.

This is set to be a fantastic new resource for use in the Art classroom and will be brilliant for use with IWB tools enabling students to truly interact with, explore and analyse major works of art.

The video clip below provides an introduction to the project and more detail.

O2 Learn – brand new website launched!

O2 are trying to help connect teachers and students with the launch of their brand new website O2 learn. Aimed at 13-18 year olds the site’s objective is to provide a way of helping students with revision or an opportunity to catch up in subjects that they might have missed or find difficult through access to free educational videos. The site encourages teachers to share inspirational teaching styles and approaches by uploading their best mini-lessons on camera. They are looking for clever ways of remembering things or understanding more complex processes.

O2 have made the site as safe as possible in relation to the moderation process. Only registered teachers can post visitors and every video and comment is read and moderated. Indeed no one is able to comment until they register and agree to the terms.

Prizes!
Twice a month, the video with the highest ratings and most view win a prize – £2,000 for themselves and £2,000 for their school. During the summer of 2011, a panel of education experts will choose 8 finalists who will eligible for winning the big prize of £50,000 for themselves and £100,000 for the school. (a second prize of 20,000 for the teacher and £40,000 for the school and a third prize of £10,000 for the teacher and £20,000 for the school will also be awarded). Winners are to be announced in October 2011, based 50% on the public vote and 50% on a panel of experts.

Thanks to Danny Nicholson (Whiteboard Blog) for the Headsup!

StudyJams for Maths and Science

Thanks to Danny Nicholson (Whiteboard Blog) for the heads up on these excellent resources for Science and Maths (would be very useful for KS3). StudyJams is a website from Scholastic with many free resources, including teaching videos / animations and slide shows on a variety of Science and Maths topics. Each topic covered also has key vocabulary lists as well as a test yourself option and some even have fun ‘Karaoke’ sing alongs to help revise concepts! Well worth a look!