EdTech medic
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, ONE STEP AT A TIME
Quick response (QR) codes, like Rodney Dangerfield, get no respect! I’ve attended professional development sessions where other educators have declared, with almost a sense of triumph over evil, “QR codes are dead!”, as if QR codes were part of a part of a sinister plot to lure unsuspecting surfers of the web to sites rife with viruses or unending pop up windows. Well...perhaps there’s some merit in that perception. Consequently, there are many in the marketing industry who might be inclined to at least see them as an idea that never lived up to the hype. In a post by Lindsay Kolowich (2014), she said that a 2013 survey found only 21% of American smartphone owners had ever scanned a QR code, and just 2% said they had scanned a QR code at least once per day. However, I don’t see QR codes as either dead, alive, evil or the holy grail. They simply exist as a tool, and as long as they continue to exist, and I see no reason why that should change, educators might find them useful as I do. I see QR codes as a tool for turning a boring handout, notes, instructions or book into a multimedia rich digital-analogue hybrid. Why QR codes?Easy to create. Easy to scan. Takes you places. QR codes are easy to create and they take students to links I wish them to see. It’s also easier for students to scan a QR code than it is for them to type a URL on their smartphone or tablet. Imagine that you’ve prepared a 2-3 page handout for your students that includes QR code links to images, websites, videos, surveys, a quiz or other sources of web-based multimedia with which you want them to interact or just see. Yes, I concede that students like paper, as do most teachers. We are still printing handouts like we can regrow trees faster than we can consume them because we prefer the look and feel of paper (Jabr, 2013). Wood, Daniel & Baker (2010) found that students continue to prefer textbooks over e-textbooks and in fact, according to Frank Catalano from GeekWire (2015), paper books have made a comeback. But...and this is important, paper books and handouts in education need no longer be a wasteland of sentences and the occasional static image. Adding QR codes converts an analogue (paper) handout to a more robust analogue-digital hybrid. Think of QR codes as windows to visual and interactive content that enhances an otherwise dull and endless string of fonts and punctuations. A few years ago I took a couple of my self-published workbooks and added a QR code to each page. Each code links to video content that I created and posted on YouTube that relates to the content of the book. I’m fairly certain it was the first truly analogue-digital hybrid book. The result is that these are digitally enhanced multimedia books! Sample: One way to generate QR codes. Do a Google search for other ways QR codes for case based learning
QR codes for learning common prescription drugs A few years ago I met with the coordinator of our Pharmacy Technology program, a pharmacist, and told her that my paramedic students needed to be able to look at the names of common prescription drugs and determine, based on those medications, what the patient’s medical conditions are. You might think we why not just ask the patient, but in fact most patients don’t know all of their medical conditions and if they’re unconscious, it’s impossible to communicate their history. So, in an interprofessional exercise, she gave her students an assignment where they wrote up a single page description for each of the most common drugs. Now, when my paramedic students do a patient scenario in our lab, they are given a group of pill bottles and have to tell the instructor what conditions the drugs are used to treat. Example: Ramipril - student says the patient has high blood pressure Metformin - the students says that the patient is a type 2 diabetic QR codes for automating class attendance Until recently, it seem to take forever to do a roll call at the start of each class. Then I came up with a simple way to automate the process. I use QR codes that I display on the screen at the start of the class and the students scan the code which takes them to a simple Google Form that the complete and submit - 2 minutes max.! See video below (also see this past post) Other ideas for QR Codes QR codes don't get a lot of respect and we can debate how much or how little they add to pedagogy. One thing they can do, is convert boring text to a digital-analogue hybrid that links students to almost any imaginable media you like. Here are some other ideas for QR codes: REFERENCES Catalano, F. (2015). Paper is back: Why 'real' books are on the rebound - GeekWire. Retrieved from http://www.geekwire.com/2015/paper-back-real-books-rebound/.
Jabr, F. (2013). The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/ Kolowich, L. (2014). Are QR Codes Dead? - Hubspot. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/qr-codes-dead. Woody, W. D., Daniel, D. B., & Baker, C. A. (2010). E-books or textbooks: Students prefer textbooks. Computers & Education, 55(3), 945-948.
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AuthorI am a paramedic educator and educational technology enthusiast. The "medic" part of this blog title simply refers to my paramedic background. Archives
October 2018
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