Three Ways to Make Useful QR Codes for Your Students

This morning I did a very simple QR code activity at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. QR codes were distributed on the tables in the room and two codes linked to prizes while the others linked to my blog. Creating that activity reminded me of Terri Eichholz's guest post from last year about creating interactive bulletin boards through the use of QR codes.

Here's a snippet from Terri's post mentioned above, First, I mixed up the artwork and poetry on the board so that they weren’t matched with each other.  Then I placed QR codes on the artwork that led the reader to an audio file in which the artist/poet read his or her poem.  I also placed QR codes that led the reader to Google Forms online that allowed the viewer to vote on their favorite pieces of art and poetry. 

Here are three tools that you can use to create QR codes to use in an activity like Terri's:

Goo.gl is Google's URL shortening tool. When you shorten a link with Goo.gl a QR code is created for it too. To find the QR code, click the "details" link after your shortened URL has been made. The details page also shows you how many times your link has been used. This is useful to me if I want to make sure that all of my students have used the link. If I see that the link or QR code has been used 17 times, but I have 25 students, I immediately seek out the students who haven't followed the link.

QR Droid's QR Code Generator allows you to create QR codes that link to websites, chunks of text, phone numbers, email addresses, contact information, calendar events, and location coordinates. To create your QR code simply complete the information fields that you want to link to then select the display size for your QR code.

Russel Tarr developed the QR Treasure Hunt Generator. The QR Treasure Hunt Generator provides you with all of the things you need to get started creating your own QR codes and using them in your classroom. To use the QR Treasure Hunt Generator type out a series of questions and answers, generate the QR codes using the tool Russel Tarr provides, then print and display the codes around your classroom or school. Click here to view a sample QR Treasure Hunt.