Here come the QR codes!

After reading a fascinatingly inspiring post by Jill Thompson about using QR codes in the classroom on her blog titled inside the classroom, outside the box! I was so excited, I could not stop thinking of how many ways I could use these handy codes in my classroom and beyond. Now, I know that students using phones in school is still taboo in most settings, but I think that using QR codes in a thoughtful way could be one of the first steps to breaking down this barrier. Some ways that I'll be challenging myself to use QR codes include: inserting a code onto a homework sheet that takes a student to a relevant website, posting a code to the weekly menu (this tells students what is due this week in my classroom) in classroom, making a poster with the codes to the frequently used websites for my class. Eventually, I feel that this will make sharing information a lot easier in the classroom and beyond. I'm imagining "back-to-school night" where parents and guardians get my course information page and included on it are the QR codes for my class website and blog. This way they don't have to worry about mis-typing the url or forgetting about it, it would be right there in their phone. Or a student could use a QR code generator (why not right?) and post it to their blog, wiki, whatever and I could move around the classroom interacting with their work,using my phone, rather than being trapped behind a computer while everything is happening around the room. I haven't been so excited about something since I heard about the flip class movement. Look for updates on how I'm using this soon, because I'm starting to use it already!