qrcodes

This week I finally figured out what to call these things that I've been seeing everywhere:

Black and white...digital...squiggly.

Of course, after learning about this from iFacilitate this week, I immediately resolved to find one of these things in real life and try it--it was so easy in the workshop! My first chance came later when I was getting coffee before I taught a class at HCC. The coffee place had a social marketing poster with the typical request to "Like us on Facebook" and a qrcode. I pulled out my phone, found my new redlaser app, and stood around contorting my body to get a steady, straight on shot with the counter in my way and the qrcode stashed at the bottom of the poster. After nearly 15 minutes of trying, I was finally successful in both following the code and taking a picture to post here.

I suppose this makes me think about those moments when I have taught a technological application in a classroom to have everyone following along nicely, and then be bombarded with emails after class about how the process is not "not as easy as it was in class." Tables turned, lesson learned.

This also got me to thinking about how to apply this technology not just to our classroom, but also as a new avenue of professionalization. I'm thinking here of the catalogs we get when we attend a professional conference--names, paper titles, abstracts. I thought of how nice it would be if each presenter also included a qrcode for his/her bibliography. After all, I often advise my writing students to find one or two sources that fit their topic, and then use the bibliographies to help point them to other sources. We are expected to supply our bibliography for publications, but not for presentations?

Now my inner economist-thinker is kicking in and telling me that it would be unfair to provide such intellectual resources to only the attendees with smart phones. However, this same information could easy be put in a website for the conference, offering a resource to people who'd like to attend but can't for time or financial reasons.

I'm also wondering if I could do something like this for handouts - maybe qrcodes on grammar worksheets to grammar sites like Grammar Girl or the grammar webcomics from The Oatmeal...