I spend two precious weeks on gaming with my students: I introduce them to Scratch one week and then have them play games the following week.  Inspired by Matt Dunleavy’s augmented reality games, I decided to create my own game using QR codes.  While I do not believe they are going to revolutionize education, I do think they have the potential to quickly create interactive experiences for students to promote learning with a dose of critical thinking that comes from playing the game itself.

I tweeted that we were doing this activity and a few folks expressed interest along with the opinion that I was corrupting my pre-service teachers, so I will take a moment to share the pretty simple “rules” for the game.  The goal of the game was to learn a bit about gaming and education, be introduced to a few people I think are interesting or important plus just some fun stuff. Remember, my content is technology so showing them how to create and use QR codes is itself part of the objective of the game.

QR Code Game:

1. Students gathered in class and formed teams.  Each team received the first sheet in the game.  It included three QR Codes: one for the directions, one for the first clue, and one for the next location.  We used the directions code to test their scanners and do some troubleshooting. Then, they scanned for the first clue, used the Internet to locate the information requested and tweeted it to my attention. Finally, they scanned the next location which was somewhat cryptic (ie, the snack machines were billed as “cookies on a hook”).

2. There were five clue sheets in all.  When the completed the last clue, they turned the sheets over.  Each had a letter and they used the five letters to spell a word which was where I was located with the prizes.

Pretty simple.  It got them up and moving and even outside on a nice day.  And it showed these digital natives another use for their phones, something none of them had ever tried before. I didn’t give a quiz to see if they learned but I think they saw a particular activity that had lots of possible applications and did not require every kid to have a device.  One iPad that would scan and had internet access would be sufficient. You could find a work around for the tweeting part if that wasn’t available in the classroom. But I’ve been trying to get them to give Twitter a chance and this was another way to show them its potential educational application.  We tweet everything we create from Voice Threads to Scratch projects so they are shared with the group and the world and it makes it easy for us to display them.