“Don’t get left behind …”

I have trained my colleagues for the last three weeks about using technology. The last workshop was on QR codes and how to use them in ELT and we came up with quite good ideas so I thought it’s high time to write a post about it.

We all know the barcodes at the back of chips, chocolate bars and nearly at the back of every product that we buy. They are the codes that include basic information about the product; and now we have QR codes.(See the picture above) They are Quick Response Codes or Mobile Codes that include more information than a barcode and can be read by smartphones using a QR code reader. See the video here.

You take a picture of the QR code and scan the code using a QR Code Reader. Once you decode the QR code, it turns into a website, a text message, a video or any other data. In fact, they are not the new technology because we have them for a long time now and they are mostly used for advertisement, websites and on business cards. It is also very easy to generate a QR code for your data. Have a look at this tool.

QR Codes look so cool and we can benefit from them in and out of the classroom. They can make our lessons fun, better and interesting. Here are some ideas for you:

• We all give homework to our kids. That would be nice to turn the answers of our homework into a QR code and put the code on the homework paper for kids to check the answers at home when they have finished their homework. This is also good for self-check and to support autonomous learning.
• In the near future, the course books will contain QR codes for extra materials and extended activities. We can do this before the publishers place the QR codes in our coursebooks. We can find extra information or prepare extra activities for each topic on our coursebooks. They can be a video, podcast or a website for extended reading activities. Children can stick them to their coursebooks and complete the activities when the time comes.
  
• You can place QR codes on the different parts of the class. Children can walk around the class scanning the codes and trying to put the pieces together. They can come up with a story, song or a text.
• When you do storytelling, you can turn the end of the story into a QR code and ask the children to scan it if they want to learn the end of it.
• You can add extra links to your presentation that includes videos with codes.
• If you are doing a podcast or a video as a post activity with your kids,ask children to turn them into QR codes and stick them to their notebooks. Parents may want to see what their children are doing at school.
• That would also be fun to place QR codes around the school or the classroom according to the themes that you teach. They can be videos, podcasts, links, text messages that are related to your themes. It can be a nice way to motivate children for extra work.
• You can turn videos or podcasts into QR codes, and children can scan the codes, do the listening activity and answer some questions, complete the missing parts in the text. You can even turn this into a competition. You divide the class into groups and the group who finishes the text or answers the questions first wins.
• You can prepare QR codes that include text and stick them around the class, divide the class into groups, ask them to walk around, scan the codes and put the text into correct order. This can also be done for storytelling. Children can put the story into the right order. For another activity, the QR codes can be the pictures of the story and children can be asked to look at the pictures and write a story.

QR codes are another way of integrating technology into your classes, some may consider this as too much work, some useless and some as a brilliant idea. I think, they add a flavour to your lessons! They are something new, something different and just another way to motivate your children …

Here are some more reading on QR codes:

QR Codes in Education by Steven W. Anderson

QR Codes in Education:A Burgeoning Narrative

QR Codes and Education

40 Interesting Ways to Use QR Codes in the Classroom by Tom Barrett

This blog or the author are not responsible for any inappropriate images/text/ads of the external links. Please double check before you use it with your students.