Activate Learning by Building Background Knowledge with QR Codes

Do you struggle to engage your learners with content they need to succeed? Try building a web quest or other scavenger hunt using QR codes; they’re not for just reading menus. In this post, I will walk you through how to create QR codes and post them into a document. This activity can be used across multiple curriculum areas and K-12 grades.

Learning Objectives

• Build background knowledge before beginning a lesson.
• Engage learners through curated research instead of “Googling it.”
• Guide learners through the note taking process and research skills.

Download a Pages Template and PDF of this project at the bottom of this page.

Getting Started

First, determine what the objective of your lesson is and what things your students may need to know before diving into content. Let’s use a history project to learn about our Founding Fathers through Martha Washington’s perspective. We then design five to seven questions that will help us learn more about the Founding Fathers.  For this lesson, the questions are: 

• My husband was first identified with this occupation (job)? What was it?
• Then my husband was drafted into service with this organization? What organization was that?
• We lived in this state? What state was it?
• This was our house? What is the name of our house?
• Do you know who my husband is?
• Who am I?

Now that we have some questions to help stimulate background knowledge, we need to find find age appropriate educational websites that have the answers and minimize ads. Students visit the website and come up with one word to summarize the website. Be sure to make a list of the websites you used to make a QR code of them later on.  Students will scan the following website and infer the keyword, I have listed the correct keywords next to the websites. The websites we used are: 

• http://www.myamericanfarm.org - student keyword farm
• https://www.army.mil - student keyword army
• https://encyclopediavirginia.org/virginia-facts/ - student keyword Virginia
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/ - student keyword White House
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/george-washington/ - George Washington 
• Answer Martha Washington

How to Create QR Codes

There are millions of QR Code generation sites and extensions. I have used QRstuff.com for years. It is free but you can pay to “jazz up” your code. Once you have mastered simple QR Codes, you may want to check out an App to make them with color or add images. Here is how you get started:

• Go to QRstuff.com or your favorite QR code generator
• Under Data Type, select website
• Copy and paste the web address or URL into the URL field
• Click the next step button, the next image on the right should change slightly.
• Test the QR Code with another device, if it is correct click Download as PNG
• On the iPad, click Download, and then click on the download icon to find the file

Important - please be sure to click on the file name, rename it, and save it to your Desktop.  Otherwise all of your files will be named similar and you will not easily remember which QR Code goes to which site.

Put it All Together in Pages

We are going to use Pages to create this worksheet but you can use Keynote as well. I will show you both and you can decide which is best to use. NOTE: I use the Desktop Publishing mode of Pages because it is easier to move things around. Here is the process:

1. Open Pages on the iPad
2. Click the + in the top right corner
3. Select Blank
4. The file should be called Blank, use the down arrow next to the name to Rename the file
5. Go back to the down arrow and select Document Options >  Select Document Setup
6. Turn off Document Body
7. The iPad will ask you to “Convert to Page Layout?” Select Convert
8. Tap the Media Button and tap Insert From.  Find the QR code you want to use, tap it, and tap open.
9. You can add text by clicking the Shapes button and select Text
10. Move the Text box to where you want it to go and start typing
11. Click the paint brush to format the text (eg. Paragraph Style, Font, Alignment, etc)
12. Create your title, directions, and questions
13. Export the document to print or share digitally. 

Here is a video describing this process.

Attachments

Martha Washington Webquest QR Code.pdf

Download  (120.8 KB)

Attachments

Martha Washington Webquest QR Code.template

Download  (2.1 MB)