Tried it Tuesday: QR Codes to Display student work

I've been a bad blogger the past week!  It was crazy busy at school and at home because the hubby was getting ready to run his second marathon on Sunday!  It was 18 degrees at the start and didn't get above 30 all day! He did a great job and even ran an extra three tenths of a mile to make the total 26.5!  He's my hero!  We got to see him several places along the route and even at mile 20 he was still smiling!

Now on to the task at hand!  Tried It Tuesday with Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper!

Today I wanted to share something new I did last week with my kiddos to display their digital work!  We've been working with Educreations a lot lately and I love that my kids can share their problem solving strategies with a larger audience, but I wanted to figure out a way to display their work in the hallway like everyone else does!  Enter QR codes.  If you haven't ventured into the world of QR codes, you really should!  They are such a cool tool to use both inside and outside the classroom!  

We use the term digital native all the time when talking about these 21st century kiddos, but if there is one thing I've learned in my 3 months of having laptops, it's that they have a lot to learn about how to use technology for educational purposes!  Sure they can upload a picture to Instagram, but ask them to change tabs, insert x, or go to a specific website and you need to just be prepared for a ton of questions!

This is the process we went through last week to create a QR code to display our Educreations videos! After my students made an Educreations video from a multiplication problem we did last week, I walked them through the process of making a QR code using qrstuff.com.  We used Power Point to create a page that had their name on it.  I used this as an opportunity to teach them how to size the page, change the layout, and insert a word art text.  They loved playing with rotating their name!  

Then we came to the tricky part.  I've been trying to teach them how to work in different tabs at the same time.  I still have some kids who can't remember how to open a new tab, but that's a different story.  They had to work within three tabs to make this all work.  First, they had to go to Educreations and log-in and pull up their video.  Then, they had to open a new tab and go to our bookmarked Todaysmeet to access the link to qrstuff.com.  Once they had the new tab for qrstuff opened, then they had to go back to Educreations and copy their link.  Go back to the qrstuff tab and paste the link to create the QR code.  Then we had to download the QR code and copy/paste it back into our power point!!!!!  Whew!  I'm exhausted just writing it all down and reliving the experience with my 4th graders!  

My original plan was to just print the codes with their names and hang up out in the hallway. That proved to be a little messy as everyone didn't quite follow directions for formatting the page.  So I made a cute little half page frame with each of their names and glued it on a colored piece of paper.  They cut out their QR codes and glued them on the frame to be displayed out in our hallway!  I think they turned out super cute!  My principal even came by and asked for a tutorial on QR codes so she could go and watch all of the videos! The bulletin board is still in progress, but when it's all done, I'll get a picture up Here is what I have done so far!