Revolutionize Vocabulary Word Walls with QR Codes

Mission:

To create a more interactive and helpful word wall for my students.

Tech Edventure:

This past school year I decided to get a little more creative with my "Vocabulary Word of the Day Wall" that I have in my classroom. As I began to learn more and more about QR codes, I decided it was time to make these "words" more useful than ever.

Students always seem to forget some of our words and are clueless as to the definition.  Now using mobile devices with cameras and a QR Reader (which you can get them free in the iTunes App Store), students can easily scan the code and see the definition of the word.  They definitely prefer this to the old-fashioned way of taking out their notebook and looking up the definition.

I did this using the website QRstuff.com.  Below is a screenshot of what you will see. For the vocabulary words, I just found the definition, copied the URL and pasted it into the "2 Content" section directly below, then I clicked on the second option (Use our qrs.ly URL shortener), and then pressed the "Download QR Code" button on the right.

Once I downloaded all of the codes, I dragged them onto a document, spaced them out and printed.  Afterwards, I cut them out individually, rescanned using a QR reader on my iPod, and lightly wrote the vocabulary word on the back of the code.

After I glued each code to the correct word, I had a completely revolutionized word wall for my Vocabulary Words of the Day.

Outcome:

As my classroom gets more and more technology (such as iPods and IPods), I'm seeing how QR codes are becoming more and more useful.  Next year, I'm going to add QR codes that take students to Testmoz quizzes (click here to read my post on how to make those quizzes) for each 15 words we cover as a class.  I'm already envisioning a classroom with QR codes all over the place!