To Scan or Not to Scan: QR Codes in Education

We have all seen them.  They seem to be everywhere these days.  Those little black and white boxes made up of seemingly random squares.

photo credit: gwire via photopin cc

But what exactly are QR codes and how can they be used in education?

QR or Quick Response Codes are a type of two-dimensional barcode that can be read using smartphones and dedicated QR reading devices. They can link directly to text, emails, websites, phone numbers and more!  QR codes can be found on product packaging, shop displays, printed and billboard advertisements as well as in emails and on websites.

If you have a smartphone like an iPhone, Android or Blackberry then there a number of different barcode scanner applications that can read and decode data from a QR code. The majority of these are free, and all you have to do once you install one is to use your phone’s camera to scan the barcode, which will then automatically load the encoded data for you.  Examples of barcode scanner applications include Red Laser and   QR Scanner 

At this stage you might be asking yourself “So what?  How does this affect my classroom or library?”    Well a recent survey has found nearly half of all Australian adults now own a smartphone and that number growing on a daily basis.  The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) study found a 104 per cent increase in smartphone use in the 12 months to May last year, bringing the number of adult smartphone users to more than 8.5 million (ABC, 2013). QR Codes have the potential to have a major impact upon society and particularly in advertising, marketing and customer service with a wealth of product information just one scan away. Why can’t school libraries ‘get a piece of the action’ by using devices that students and their parents are comfortable with to increase advertising, marketing and customer service?

You can make your own QR codes using designated 2D barcode generators, some of which are listed below.  QR Code generators that are currently available include:

• http://www.qrstuff.com/
• http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
• http://quikqr.com/

So once I can generate QR codes, what do I do with them?  Some ideas for use in the classroom or library include:

• For students to view YouTube clips for information
• Put QR codes inside books to send student to reviews of the book.
• Add QR Codes to student homework which link to video tutorials to help students if they are stuck on the problems.
• Place QR codes in the school year book that link to videos on the school’s YouTube channel and various internet sites.
• Get kids to the correct website or web resource for the lesson (place QR code on top of work page).  No more students saying that they can’t find the site or the URL doesn’t work!
• A QR Code Quest: a Library Media Scavenger Hunt 
  

For more ideas on using QR codes in the classroom visit ZDNet and the article 50 QR code resources for the classroom. 

I know what you are saying: “My school has banned mobile phone use in school time”.  If your school will not allow students to use their phones in class time for educational reasons try using iPods or a class set of iPads or tablets.  I have also used the webcam on laptops to scan QR codes as the school would not allow students to use their phones.  It is a little more cumbersome but it is achievable.

ABC News. (2013, Friday 1st February). Half of Australian adults own a smartphone  Retrieved 3rd October, 2013, from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-01/half-of-australian-adults-now-own-a-smartphone/4494892

The Death of Books (or not)

This week I came across a Jeffery Koterba cartoon from the EBook Friendly website that tickled my funny bone and I thought I would share it with you.

A cartoon by Jeffery Koterba

This cartoon started me thinking about the ‘eReaders are the death of books’ argument again.  Some accuse eBooks and eReaders of stripping the reader of a nostalgic and valuable experience that occurs with physical books, claiming “books that we’ve known and handled often have a personal, physical connection to the past that e-books won’t be able to capture” (Ng in Mennalla, 2011).  Connections are made between reader and book based on components like the cover, spine, colors, paper type and fonts.  They argue that the Kindle is so much less personalized and some worry that the purpose of books and the reading experience itself will be lost (Mennella, 2011).

While personally I do love the feel and texture of a book, I still use eReaders for convenience.  Why does it have to be all or none?  Why can’t eReaders, eBooks and books co-exist.  I don’t believe that the reading experience will be lost just because people have read the book on a Kindle.  Last year I taught in a secondary college that introduced eBooks with their 1:1 laptop program.  The college used the OverDrive Platform to deliver eBooks to the students.  What we found was not the death of books (as predicted by the Deputy Principal) but quite the opposite.  One year after eBooks had been integrated into the library the borrowing rates of hard copy books had increased by 20%!  We also found that generally students did not care what form the book came in – digital or hard copy, as long as it was available when they wanted to read it.

Book borrowing habits are changing.  Library users are going to library branches less and using the library website more for book and audio downloads (Zickuhr, Rainie, Purcell, Madden & Brenner, 2012).  Therefore libraries must move with the times and cater for the needs of their patrons.  However I do not believe that this spells the end of the book.  Just like some weeks I like to read detective books and other weeks I prefer psychological thrillers, some occasions I prefer to read hard copy books while on others I favour eReaders.  It is not an all or nothing decision.

Mennella, A. (2011, 14th June). What is “Social Reading” and why should Libaries care?  Retrieved from http://tametheweb.com/2011/06/14/what-is-%E2%80%9Csocial-reading%E2%80%9D-and-why-should-libraries-care-a-ttw-guest-post-by-allison-mennella/

Zickuhr, L, Rainie,L., Purcell, K., Madden, M. & Brenner, J. (2012, 22 June). Libraries, patrons, and e-books Retrieved from http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/06/22/libraries-patrons-and-e-books/

What’s Hot

Recently I spoke to a group of teenagers at my school about what is currently ‘hot’ or popular with young people today.  Popular online activities and methods of keeping in contact included Facebook, AskFm, Skype and Twittter.  The most popular site by far at the moment was Tumblr.  They also mentioned that pretty much any social media site was popular or used except for MySpace and MSN.  They were “sooo yesterday!”

Popular movies at the moment included World War Z, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games and Now You See Me.  Television shows that teenagers like to watch included Adventure Time, Supernatural, Sherlock, Dr Who and Two Broke Girls.  What was surprising to me was that reality TV shows were not so popular anymore.  Young people occasionally watched Big Brother but that was the only reality show.

Games and gaming were still popular with most students playing Call of Duty, Halo, Assassin’s Creed and Minecraft.

What was very popular with young people today was fan fiction and sites such as DeviantART.  This is a site where young people can take the ideas of others and add to or extend it through art or writing or they can post their own artistic creations.  The art may take the form of digital, skin, themed, wallpaper or traditional art.

I have put together a Pinterest board displaying what is popular with young people today:

Click on the image to go to the Pinterest site “What’s Hot”

What’s Engaging Young People Today?

What’s Engaging Young People Today?

I switch off the latest Katy Perry song on my car stereo which is synced with my iPod Touch and notice that the laces of my Vans are undone so I pause to tie them.  As I enter the eco-friendly, independent coffee shop, my smart phone beeps at me.  It’s an email from a student who is submitting the draft of their assignment and requesting feedback.  After ordering a café latte and macaroon from a barista who is wearing a Lorna Jane outfit, I find a table and take out my tablet.  Plugging into the coffee shop’s wireless signal, I open my iTunes account and put in earphones to listen to music while I mark the student’s draft on my tablet.  My friend texts to say that she will be a few minutes late, as she had to take her daughter to the new 1 Direction movie.  

photo credit: Fey Ilyas via photopin cc

As we are all citizens of the digital world we are hard pressed to escape the influence of mass media and popular culture.  However, it has been suggested that popular culture produces much of the materials out of which young people fashion their identity.  These materials can include images and messages from music, TV, film, technology, and fashion (Barker, 2000).  Recently I had the opportunity to interview a group of young students, aged 14yrs to 15 yrs about the texts they like to read and what is popular at the moment.  In other words, what materials where fashioning their identity?  I asked a number of open questions that allowed the student to direct the conversation.  Examples of the questions include “What texts do you like to read?”  “What shows do you watch?” and “”What do you read or do online?”

What was surprising about the responses was that eReaders appear to be just as popular texts and hardcopy books.  What became obvious was that young people do not necessarily have a preference for eBooks of traditional books.  They tend to choose the format that is convenient for them at the time.  For example, if they are going on holidays and don’t what to take up much space in their suitcase, they will load up their eReader with books.  If they are just reading at home then they will read a hardcopy.  So it seems that young readers do not want eBooks to replace print books, they are just using them to supplement their general reading habits.

What I found particularly interesting was that online young people are very engaged in Fan Fiction, they write fiction stories extending the ideas from a popular novel.  They are creating new works from the ideas of others.

Another online activity that was especially note-worthy was the participation in DeviantART .  This is a site where young people also take the ideas of others and add to or extend it through art or they can post their own artistic creations.  The art may take the form of digital, skin, themed, wallpaper or traditional art.

A wide variety of shows were being viewed by young people.  They ranged from cartoons such as Adventure Time to fantasy shows such as Super Natural .  What I found surprising was that reality shows were not as popular with young people as I had assumed.  The only reality shows that were watched included X-factor and occasionally Big Brother but that was losing popularity.  Other television shows that were watched included Sherlock and Dr Who. 

photo credit: brina_head via photopin cc

Barker, C. (2000). Cultural studies: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Critical Literacy & Digital Technology

The world is changing and evolving exponentially. We live in an increasingly diverse, globalized and information-rich society. If our students are to be prepared to successfully navigate this 21st century world, then they must become literate in 21st century literacies. Critical literacy skills are a vital component necessary for students to become genuinely literate in the twenty-first century. With the explosion of access to information in multimedia and multimodal texts in the last decade, young people must be proficient in critical literacy so that they can reconcile the messages contained within the surfeit of text forms, types and ever evolving communication technologies. I believe that students must be able to think critically and to use knowledge and information to make decisions and that critical literacy skills are more vital now than ever before.

photo credit: Gary Hayes via photopin cc

Recently I read an interesting article by Wohlwend & Lewis (2011) titled Critical Literacy, Critical Engagement, and Digital Technology. This article examined the changing nature of critical literacy within a digital and global environment.  They stated that researchers are arguing for using print approaches to achieve critical readings of online texts as critical literacy takes on increasing importance in the computer-mediated cyber world as people need to scrutinize huge amounts  of information.  Am I hearing a collective “Yesss” out there?  I am sure that as teachers we have all experienced the phenomenon of students just blindly accepting everything that they have read and exclaiming “But it must be true, I read it on a website!”  I know we have all conducted lessons to challenge the critical reading level of our students with sites such as The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

However Wohlwend and Lewis (2011) take it a step further and suggest a move from critical literacy to critical engagement.  They focus on critical engagement through the dimensions of convergence and embodiment (Wohlwend & Lewis, 2011 p.189).  Critical engagement with convergence not only unpacks meanings and social affordances created by interconnected technologies, but also makes transparent the motives and influences of information and communication providers concentrated in a few mass media conglomerates.  From this perspective critical issues involve capital expenditure, hardware costs, and inequitable access among consumers. Critical engagement considers how quality of participation enables or limits the ability to produce and not just consume and how participation affects life chances. 

This brings us to Jenkins idea of participatory culture.  “A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’ creations, and some type of informal mentorship….A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another…” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Robison, & Weigel in Wohlwend & Lewis, 2011).

For more ideas on Jenkins participatory culture, watch this Youtube clip:

Critical engagement with participatory cultures looks at the way digital literacy practices legitimate full membership in online communities and considers how the desire to belong interacts with individual agency as well as members’ complicity in practices and media with disparate social effects.  Although youth have the skills to participate and interact with new media environments, they may not be adept at the critical skills necessary for analyzing the cultural practices and institutional norms of these environments (Wohlwend & Lewis, 2011).

Wohlwend, K., & Lewis, C. (2011). Critical Literacy, Critical Engagement, and Digital Technology: Convergence and Embodiment in Glocal Spheres. In D. Lapp, & Fisher, D. (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (pp. 188-194). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Is Social Reading Just a Fad?

This week I came across the term social reading and became very excited by the idea.  When I was young, reading and writing was done alone and in isolation.  However these days these activities are becoming very social.

According to Mennella (2011) social reading is where people want to share what they have read with others and to receive feedback about their thoughts and ideas.  Social reading results from the interactions between people and the text, whether in-person or digitally.  Social reading extends the readers experience as it encourages them to make connections, draw conclusions and ask questions in conversations with others.  Mennella (2011) believes that it helps make a book memorable.

There are various forms of social reading.  According to Stein there are four categories to social reading:

Category 1 — Discussing a book in person with friends and acquaintances (offline, informal, synchronous, ephemeral).  These discussions are informal and superficial and soon peter out.

Category 2 — Discussing a book online (online, informal, synchronous or asynchronous, persistent).  These discussions can take place in specialized sites developed for readers such as Shelfari, Goodreads, LibraryThing and Amazon’s review pages.  Mennella (2011) believes that the online book club as a form of social reading has the advantage of offering a variety of book clubs dedicated to specialized interest, genre, author or series.

Category 3 — Discussing a book in a classroom or living–room book group (offline, formal, synchronous, ephemeral).  This form is the traditional book club where a group of readers meet in person to discuss a specific book in-depth.

Category 4 — Engaging in a discussion in the margins (online, formal, synchronous or asynchronous, persistent).  This latest form of social reading involves eBooks and eReaders.  The eBook Kindle has recently introduced new features that encourage readers to share their thoughts with other users around the world.  A feature called ‘popular highlights’ allows Kindle users to make their book notes and highlights available for others to see.  Any Kindle user can share their thoughts on the book passages and ideas with friends, family, colleagues and the Kindle community (Mennella, 2011).

Photo by: Edwc CC:Flickr

Check out the Open Utopia

by Stephen Duncombe.  It is a free, online version of Thomas More’s Utopia that anyone can browse and annotate.  It is published under a Creative Commons license, open to read, copy and modify.  Open Utopia builds on the idea that a book doesn’t have to be a static text.  Online, it can be a gathering place, a shared space where readers record their reactions and conversations.  These interactions then become part of the book.  To me, this is a very exciting idea.  Image the discussions that could ensue if this idea could be used when studying a class novel?

But what does this mean for schools and libraries? Social reading seems to be more than a trend but a shift in preference about how people like to read.  Libraries will be required to play a vital role in the promotion of social reading in order to enhance the user experience.  At the school I am currently teaching in I have instigated a traditional book club that consists of students in Years 8-12 which meets once a week.  We also use GoodReads as an online portal for the book club to facilitate dialogue about the books read and for students to create and maintain profiles.  Just image the conversations if these books could be read on a Kindle or eReader, with students highlighting passages along the way and making their notes public to the book club?  Mixing these forms would create the ultimate social reading experience.

If you are interested in learning more about social reading and how people are reading your text view this podcast on an open platform for social reading:

Mennella, A. (2011, 14th June). What is “Social Reading” and why should Libaries care?  Retrieved from http://tametheweb.com/2011/06/14/what-is-%E2%80%9Csocial-reading%E2%80%9D-and-why-should-libraries-care-a-ttw-guest-post-by-allison-mennella/

Stein, B.  A Taxonomy of Social Reading: a proposal   Retrieved from http://futureofthebook.org/social-reading/introduction/index.html

Popular Culture and Gaming

Recently on the news I was watching the new polar bear cub at Sea World, Gold Coast, playing beside its mother.  At home we all ‘oooed’ and ‘aaaahed’ over it and talked about how cute it was playing in the ice.  In the wild, young animals play to practice and develop skills that will aid them their entire lives. Are human children really that different?  Don’t human children gain many of the same benefits from playing?  When children play, don’t they exercise their imagination, problem-solving skills, and many other important mental faculties?

photo credit: Missud via photopin cc

Piaget and Vygotsky  also had this thought and theorized that play is an essential part of learning (Cognitive Development Theories: Children Learning and Symbolic Play, 2003).  Play is a solid means of helping children learn. It is a way for teachers to assess what a child understands and what interests the child.  Play exposes a student’s problem-solving skills so that a teacher can know how they think, plan, and organize.  Many people claim that the digital revolution has changed play with cries such as “Children don’t play outside anymore”.  If play has changed and education is linked to play, then how does education need to change?  Can gaming be used in the educational setting?  With the popularity of gaming continuing to rise amongst 21^st century learners, then maybe it is time to integrate it more into our teaching pedagogy.

Gaming in the classroom can be used in a number of different ways.  Gaming can:

• Reinforce student skills with practice

Try the Citation Game where students play an interactive game and learn how to correctly format APA or MLA citations for some of the most commonly used citations types.

• Prepare students for new ideas and concepts

   

Industry  Islands is an online game where business students model the process of conducting industry research: asking the right industry questions, using the best sources to answer those questions, and knowing how far to probe when doing this type of research.

•  Assess or test skills

Ready Reference  is an online game that is used to test how well students know their reference sources and to test their knowledge.

Classroom Jeopardy was designed by a teacher for use in the classroom as a SmartBoard review game or played online in the classroom. Teachers can create their own Jeopardy review game on any subject, or play any of the games from the game library.

After delving into the idea of gaming as learning more deeply I found that libraries are encouraging a culture of gaming.  According to the American Library Association (American Library Association) school and academic libraries have a mission to provide curriculum support.  As games provide stories and information, presented in a new format, that encourages critical thinking and problem solving, they can be used to accomplish curriculum objectives.  Chess has been a game that has been supported in libraries for many years, so why not extend that support to other games?

Some libraries are even organizing gaming programs and events.  Students can attend Pokemon and monopoly Tournaments, and Wii Bowling (visit http://www.librarygamingtoolkit.org/faq.html to find out more about building gaming at your library).

Currently the school library where I am working holds lunchtime chess tournaments.  Why can’t that be extended to online and video games?

Photo by: Senor Coda CC: fotopedia

Building a gaming program at the school library will create a community place for students’ to socialize and play.  Gaming programs should be primarily social events were students build relationships.  My next project in our library will be to organise a gaming program, where the emphasis is on community and socializing.

American Library Association. The Librarian’s Guide to Gaming: An Online Toolkit for Building Gaming @ your library  Retrieved 29th August, 2013, from http://www.librarygamingtoolkit.org/faq.html

Cognitive Development Theories: Children Learning and Symbolic Play. (2003)  Retrieved 28th August, 2013, from http://www.ukessays.com/essays/education/cognitive-development-theories-children-learning-and-symbolic-play-education-essay.php#ixzz2dFsxFmiy

“People constan…

“People constantly make pop-culture references. That’s why it’s called popular culture, because people are aware of it and reference it constantly.”

Seth Rogen

This blog was established as part of the requirements for the unit CLN647: Youth, Popular Culture & Texts.  I am hoping to explore my thoughts on pop culture and how it can be integrated into the classroom and our teaching practices.