QR Codes Treasure Hunt for Beginners

Learn more about QR Codes

I have a group of teens 1 at CTJ South Lake Branch with few students. For this very reason, I'm always looking for extra activities which can keep them motivated. I heard about QR codes last year. I was teaching at Maristao (a high school in Brasilia) with Dani Lyra, and she mentioned how she had used it in one of her classes and how engaged students were trying to find out what the codes were about. Since that time, I wanted to develop an activity in which students depended on the codes to solve a problem. That's how I came up with the idea of the treasure hunt.




LEVEL: Teens 1
When: After all unit 1
Objective: Ask personal questions (third person)
People involved: teacher, students and staff

Preparation:

1. If you are going to use students´ device, one class before the activity, ask them to download a QR reader app (there are free QR readers available for iOS and Android).
2. Think of the person you want to be your "secret" one. Look for information about this person. In our case, it was Romero Britto. 
3. I did the activity in the second part of my class, so in the first part, I had the the opportunity to revise all the questions they were supposed to ask. This was of undue importance because I asked all people involved not to answer students questions if they were incorrect.
4. Create the codes which contain the instructions. I created mine on a site Carla Arena suggested -  qrstuff.com. Give the Qr Codes to the other people involved with the questions students should ask and  the answer they should give. In  my case, I wanted students to practice the questions orally, so the codes just led them to where they should go.
5. Students were to find out who the secret famous person was. So, they had to go to the places I indicated in the secret messages (QR codes) and follow all the instructions given. For example: The first code was in the classroom. They had to scan it, using their mobile devices,  and it said, "Go to 'Secretaria'. Look for Juliana. Ask her if it is a man or a woman.After asking the question correctly, students would not only receive the answer but also another code which guided them to the next person. For example, after asking Juliana, they received the second code, that was:Go to the library. Look for Dalva. Ask her how old he is.
   
   The process was the same until the last code, which was in class again. In this code, I led them to a google page where they saw Romero Britto's paintings.

Follow-up:  I asked them to create a page in Skitch (a mobile app), including Romero Britto's picture. They were supposed to make sentences with all the information collected.

Conclusion: I loved the result! Thinking of all the steps and procedures was hard, but my job during the activity was just monitoring them and check if they were speaking English all the time. I love when I can integrate other skills in my classes. It wasn't just another language practice activity. They had to download apps, learn how to use them, include photos and text... They were autonomous. I was there just to help. That's it! They were responsible for finding the clues, the answers, writing the text. They were responsible for their own learning process, and it was magic!

Our contributor for this post

The Ed Tech Team RESOURCES:
Here´s a QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator you might want to try: http://www.classtools.net/QR/
40 ways of using QR Codes in the classroom 

No homework today!!!

It is not that difficult to play the role of a nice teacher. Everybody knows that the word “homework” does not go with “thank you very much.” Students, however, think that homework is directly related to workbooks and that anything apart from that can cause them no harm. Here follows something that happened to me last week. My students, who had been talking about rules for two weeks, asked for “no homework.” They were really surprised and happy when I gave them a positive answer. There was just a little condition: they had to go to http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/teens6 and post one of the rules they had at home and make a comment about it. Take a look at the result. Isn’t it homework? They don’t think so! =D

Also see http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/teens57

By Fábio Ferreira

M-Interviews

Students were studying Relative Clauses (who,that,which). They were divided in 5 groups. Each group had a cell phone to take a photo. I talked to some people in the branch (previously) (Cláudio Azevedo, Thelma Peres, Vera Cerejo, Louise (trainee) and Silvania (secretaria). I asked these people if my students could ask them some questions and take a photo with their cell phones. They gave me their permission. After the break, I explained students that they would talk to a person and ask these people some personal questions, take notes and take a photo of him or her. I gave them 10 minutes to do it. After that, they came back to the classroom and sent the photo of the person to my e-mail. I gave them 5 minutes to come up with sentences using relative clauses and pronouns to introduce the interviewed person to the class. I opened my e-mail and as I was showing the photos(using the data show) the group was talking to the class about the person they have interviewed. In this particular activity I needed the internet connection, which was working just fine that day. But they could have also shared their photos and information in groups. They get together with people from other groups and show the photo using the cell phone itself. It took 20 minutes to do everything and they had a lot of fun, talking to other people and especially using their cell phones!

Let`s M that Learning!

From time to time new trends and innovative practices take over the language classrooms. From video cassettes and cd players to computers and interactive boards, emerging technology has always been present in the lives of teachers. Some innovations are easy to deal with, others require patience, skills and a lot of creativity. In recent years, a lot has been talked about "m-learning", that is, the use of mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) in the classroom.Smartphones and tablets are gadgets that have come to stay and we teachers cannot deny their existence anymore. For teachers who are concerned about being up-to-date with the latest trends, it is paramount that they learn how to operate those state-of-the-art devices and get used to new lingo, such as APPs. By the way, do you know what APPs are?

As a matter of fact, like any other new technology that comes out in the market, the use of mobile devices in the classroom has already caused a great stir and generated a lot of controversial opinions. Our challenge, as teachers, is to find creative and effective ways to use these devices in classroom so as to promote learning in the classroom. Some experts believe that it seems to be a much wiser decision to find ways to incorporate the students' most beloved and inseparable object into the lessons than just saying to turn them off as they enter the classroom. By the way, have you already seen how many amazing (and sometimes unbelievable) things those little objects are capable of? Have you ever considered the colossal potential they have to turn learning into something more exciting and alluring to students of the 21st century?

But some questions might be already popping in your mind:
How do I get started?
How can I effectively use a smartphone or tablet with my groups?
What APPs do I use?

The answers to these questions have not been completely answered yet and the light at the end of the tunnel is still a little blurry. However, the more teachers experiment with this new technology, the clearer the light at the end of the tunnel will be! So this is the time to plunge into this ocean called "m-learning" in search of all the questions that need to be answered. Visit internet pages specialized in m-learning, google your questions, ask students about the APPS they already know and enjoy, explore your mobile devices, connect with other teachers who are already taking advantage of such devices in their classrooms, etc. I don`t consider myself a specialist and I still need to learn a lot about "m-learning". I`ve just had my first smartphone for 2 months but I have already experimented a bit with it and tried to involve the whole group in my proposed projects. Here are some of the ideas I have already tried:

1. Songify
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/songify/id438735719?mt=8

This is a very popular app that transforms speech into music. There are different tunes you can use, some for free, some paid.The app has been advertised as free for a limited time. The songs can be shared via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

I have used this app in two different ways:

a) Students recorded a short paragraph about themselves using the target grammar structure. Then, classmates had to listen to the mixed song and summarize the information they could understand.


b) Students recorded some sentences about themselves using the target grammar structure. After, I (the teacher) asked some comprehension questions (just like a traditional listening comprehension exercise).

* tips:

a) avoid very long sentences or too much information because the mixing might break the information into chunks and change their order, making comprehension a bit more challenging.

b) results are better achieved if speech is loud and clear when recording.

c) re-songify the speech into a different tune if it`s too difficult to understand (depending on the tune you use, it can make a major difference!)

2. Web Treasure Hunts
You can ask your students to search the World Wide Web for some answers needed for some exercises. In one one my groups, for instance, they had to answer questions about popular bedtime stories. Most of them didn`t know all the right answers, so they promptly looked for information in Google and Wikipedia.

3. Camera 

a) Another project that got my students involved in a matter of seconds was asking them to go around the school hallways taking pictures of students, teachers and school staff. This group was learning vocabulary about clothes and physical description, so when they returned to the classroom, I asked them to pair up, show their pictures and describe the people in them.
* I asked the students who didn`t have a camera to pair up with someone else and use the partner`s camera. 

b) Once, I assigned a special homework project and, to my surprise, most students really worked on it. They were learning about likes and dislikes, so I asked them to go home , choose a family member and take 5 pictures of objects or situations that would clearly illustrate what that person liked or disliked. When students came to the next class, they sat in groups and shared their pics and talked a bit about their family members.
* Students who didn`t have a smartphone or tablet with a camera, used their portable video games or traditional digital cameras.

So, have some of these ideas inspired you? I hope so! So, what are you waiting for? The future has arrived, it`s time to try out new ideas. One important thing: share with us what you have done in class, this way we can build knowledge together and improve our skills faster.
Let`s "M" that learning!

Vinicius Lemos