A Technology Blog Hop

Spring into Technology with Classroom Freebies!

Several phenomenal teachers, Technology Tailgate Coaches and bloggers are joining forces for an amazing classroom technology blog hop!  As you hop from blog to blog, you will visit some of your favorite blogs and discover a few new blogs too!  Each with a fabulous freebie just for you!

Thank you for hopping over!

I love when I get an opportunity to share great technology resources with other educators. I have had a fascination with QR Codes for a couple of years now. Thus, I like to implement them into the classroom any way I can. I have created a freebie specifically for the technology blog hop that I hope you will enjoy! These are fun writing prompts in the form of QR codes. It is a great way for students to be surprised by picking a writing prompt. To download a copy, just click on the image below. Happy Hopping!

Thank you so much for stopping by and visiting!  If you are new to my blog and like what you see, don't forget to follow me!  The next stop on the path is  Kristen at Teacher Playground

In case you didn't start from the beginning, here is an ordered list of all participating blogs!

The Technology Tailgate

Kate from EduKate and Inspire

Kristin from iTeach 1:1

Heidi from Rakis Rad Resources

Leah from Learn With Leah

Amanda and Aylin from Learning to the Core

Nikki from An Uncommon to the Core Teacher

Karla at The Connected Teacher

Shana at Enchanted with Technology

Kristen at Teacher Playground

Jen at Tech with Jen

Kay at A Little Tech

Melanie at I Luv Twek

Carrie and Caitlin at Table Talk with C & C

Lauren at iWonder

Jan at The Science Vault

A special thank you to Jen at Tech with Jen for designing the blog hop button!

Interested in joining our next blog hop?  Join here! 

QR Cubes

I stumbled upon the idea of QR cubes a while back and thought there were so many possibilities of how they could be used in the classroom, I just wanted to share. They are so simple to make and it is a great way to bring technology into the classroom. 

I have actually built quite a few now because they have been quite addicting. For example, I created one for writing prompts. The students would roll the cube and then with a QR Reader (I'll list some below) scan to see what prompt they would be writing about. Some other ideas you could make cubes for are:

• Content questions for review
• Warm up questions
• Wrap up questions
• Story elements that a student would have to identify after reading a story
• Quick Facts
• Rewards/Incentives
• Positive sayings
• Vocabulary
• As a way of grouping
• Math problems for students to solve

Here is a link to my Writing Prompt QR Cube if you would like a copy. All you would need to do is just print it out and assemble the cube!

Directions to make your own

If you would like to make one, I have detailed out the steps below. I suggest creating all of your QR codes first and saving them to your documents. My favorite QR generator is QR Stuff but you can use any QR generator you prefer to create them. I just love that QR Stuff allows you to change the color of the codes, whereas a lot of others only create in black.  

1. Go to QR Stuff and choose plain text for the data type.
2. Enter in your text you want the students to read when scanning.
3. Choose your preferred color.
4. Then under the preview box, click download QR code.
5. Choose the location where you would like to save it, name the file (for example my naming scheme usually is writing 1, writing 2, and so on because it'll make things easier later to locate and identify) and then of course save!
6. I repeat the first five steps until I have all six QR codes created for the cube's sides.
7. Next, open up the cube template. Click HERE if you would like to use the one like mine. However, any cube template will do. (For some reason they file looks blank on Google Docs until you download it but it's really there).
8. Now from the template (opens in Word), choose insert picture and navigate to your first QR code.
9. I simply resize and move the QR code to fit the template and continue the steps until all of my QR codes fit nicely on there.
10. I then save the file and print the QR cube file out on card stock. You can do it with plain paper but I find card stock holds up so much longer and it's easier to glue together.
11. Voila! You have your QR cube.

Also, here are a few QR reader apps I recommend. You can search for them on iTunes or Google Play for Android.

i-nigma

QR Droid

NeoReader

RedLaser

QR Codes

So what is a QR Code? A QR Code is a two-dimensional matrix barcode that is scanned by smartphones or bar code readers. The information encoded can link to a website, provide text, give a phone number or other data.

Watch the Common Craft video to understand more about QR Codes.
http://www.commoncraft.com/video/qr-codes

Check out how to get started and more QR resources at link below:

QR Codes