Thursday, February 9, 2012

Create a Story with QR Codes

During my 8th grade advertising unit, I wanted to incorporate QR codes. Always trying to avoid a lecture, and also always trying to include hands-on application, I created the following lesson with the end product being a story using QR codes. Here is my story, with details on the lesson at the end of this post. 

The students really enjoyed pulling out their phones and iPods (We are a BYOD school) to read QR codes that they found online and that they made. Of course they started out making silly ones, but then they also created some unique stories. The first limitation we had was that the more common QR code generators like Kaywa limit you to 250 characters, about two sentences per code. Then I found Delivr which allows 1500 characters. 

Our art teacher had the students use Delivr to do their author biographies and our gym teacher is planning on using QR codes to post instructional videos at each station. There are many curricular uses including creating notes and links to study for a science test, explaining how to solve a math problem and assembling a timeline for an event in history using text, links to pictures and links to videos. Since they are essentially a picture that can be saved, they can be posted in blogs, on Edmodo and Moodle, and as I did shared via many Web 2.0 tools. 

I tend to follow Bloom's Taxonomy when creating a lesson, so I began this lesson with the students doing individual research, replying to these questions with details in their own words: 

1. What is a QR Code?
2. Where are they found?
3. How are they used in advertising?
4. Compare/contrast them to a regular magazine ad or posted sign
5. Convince our principals that there are many helpful ways they can be used in the classroom (by students and teachers)
6. With a partner, learn how to create a QR code and use them to create a story. The story needs to have ten QR codes, seven with text and three of them being links to pictures. I also offered the option to work alone and only create seven codes, two of which were pictures.



  1. A very clever use of QR codes. Maybe it could also be used for summaries of content in a social studies unit. For example: What was the economic impact of the New Deal?

    1. Thank you! Yes, I can see lots of applications for this in the classroom, with any content area.