My Grade 6 students are currently reading Jeanne DuPrau’s dystopian novel The City of Ember. As an exercise in comprehension and (let’s face it!) creating beautiful things, they set their hands to drawing characters, settings, or scenes from the book.
The students also crafted concise (300 character) descriptions for their artwork and ‘translated’ them into QR codes. QR (quick response) codes were created in Japan and can be ‘read’ using a QR reader on mobile devices like iPads, iPod Touches and phones. There are many such readers, but the favored one in my class is i-nigma. There are plenty of great places to learn more about QR codes in the classroom; good places to start are the Cool Cat Teacher Blog and Steve Anderson’s Live Binder.
My students really got into this assignment and worked carefully to create some stunning art. Once their work was complete we put together an ‘art gallery’ in our classroom. The students loved ambling through the gallery discussing and admiring each other’s drawings, and they had fun translating the QR codes with their mobile devices. After the gallery walk we discussed those descriptions that really captured the essence the characters, settings, or scenes.
Are you using QR codes in your classroom? My class would love to hear what your students are doing with these pixilated products of technological wizardry.
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I love your idea for this book. I am going to try and do this with my 6th grade class. I am new to the QR Codes, so this will be a learning experience for me. Thanks for sharing this on the internet.