QR Codes and Science

Recently we introduced our students to the world of QR Codes. As they entered the classroom this week they immediately spotted a dozen 'What am I?' questions stuck up around the room, all with their own "funny looking pixelated box" underneath.

Our discussion began with students predicting what these funny boxes were, and discovering from each other that they actually hold interesting information. 

The students formed small groups and rotated around the room, each reading the 'What am I?' questions and discussing which organ of the human body they thought it the clues were related to. Once everyone had predicted their answers, the group scanned the codes using a free app called scan to reveal the true answer. The students were enlivened by this experienced and started suggesting other ways in which we could use QR Codes in our learning. 

The students decided that they would create their own questions and QR Codes (after a very brief explanation on how to do this), to teach each other about the skeleton. As we were already in the middle of building our own creative diagram of the human body, some groups thought it would be a good idea to use QR Codes to label their parts and organs instead of the more traditional labels that we see everyday. 

This little concept sparked many of the students to go home and teach their parents about QR Codes and discuss the many possibilities for their existence. Some students began spotting and collecting QR Codes as they came across them in Newsletters, brochures or magazines.

    

Let's Collaborate

Stage two of implementation incorporated iPads and iPod touches into our morning literacy block. While the class is set up with rotational activities during guided reading, the mobile devices are set up to be used at one station. The students are notified and the required apps are download at home in advance. 

Puppet Pals: The students were introduced to the app during a whole year level demonstration. We found that the students who had downloaded Puppet Pals at home had already spent some time familiarising themselves with the app, therefore reducing the time that we had to spend unpacking it. The students at this station engaged in script writing. They were asked to develop a short script that would be reflective of the orientation of a narrative (considering elements such as: who, what, when, where etc).

During the next literacy block, when the students found themselves back at the script writing station, the students were asked to pair up, make final adjustments and choose only one of the scripts before selecting one of the available devices to record their mini Puppet Pal show. 

Puppet Pal allowed the students to work collaboratively with each other, delegate and accept speaking roles, make evaluative judgements when choosing which script they would ‘perform‘, while capturing the attention of even the most disengaged students. 

We also introduced 'Writer's Hat' as a quick tool for students to gather inspiration for their writing. Some students found the writing prompts to be far too random, however, were able to make use of one or two of the suggested made. 


Student comments: 


"Puppet Pals let me expand my creativity and made English feel like an adventure!" - Charlie. C


"There are just so many ways to learn with this technology." - Genevieve. B


"I loved sharing my ideas and working in groups." - Arabella. S


"Puppet Pals stretched my imagination and it made me want to write something interesting enough to perform." Ronan. B


"Writer's hat gave me quick ideas so that I could begin my writing faster. The ideas were challenging but fun!" - Aoife. W