QR Code Scramble: Using Smartphones for Good

Left to Right: Ali, Khalid and Mazi unscrambling a text, 21st century style

Everyday we have to tell our students to put their phones away. ARG! After all they distract them from learning!

Despite our best pleas and threats, our good-cop and bad-cop discussions, we can't win this struggle.

Technology is obviously omnipresent, and, in fact, it is so embedded in students' lives that they think about, learn about and understand their word through those pesky little devices that can drive us insane.

So why NOT use them instead of forbid them? Furthermore, while we obviously have to make sure they don't abuse the power they have in their palms, there are ways to incorporate them into our instruction while engaging our students. ...

Students starting the activity

This activity idea is not really original with what it does, and there are obviously a million ways to adapt this for certain needs and contexts, so I will simply explain what I did and hope you come up with something better. :-)  Also, I embed the materials I used in links throughout, but I post them individually at the end for easy access as well. ...

First, our Level 4 students at the ELC are working on pre-collegiate skills, but because this is a more advanced level, we are building many of the skills they will need for college. In our reading course, we have been working on paraphrasing and outlining as builder skills for summary writing.

So I had them read a text about Education in The United States for homework. I asked them to look for the main ideas (something we had talked about) and be ready to discuss those ideas in class. "Main ideas" are the explicit or implicit main idea or topic sentence in each paragraph. I have them pull these out, and then later we pick the most important ideas (based on their purpose) and use those for summaries.

For the activity, I paraphrase the main ideas of each paragraph as I saw them (they will write paraphrases for a later text -- here I write it to help model paraphrasing for this purpose) and put them in a QR code

Ali after scanning for the idea

I did this by using a QR Code Generator (I use this one, but there are many other if you google for it). Then you put in the link, picture, or in this case, the paraphrased sentences and create a QR code. These codes, if you didn't click on the link above for more info, are simply cryptic codes usually used for hidden messages. It is widely used is marketing and advertising and is all the rage among the smartphone crowd these days.

Thus, to complete this activity, your students will need a smartphone and a QR code scanner for their smartphone. For our school this is easy because many of the international students have and are attached to their smartphones and know all about the fancy new apps available.

But back to the activity: I randomly ordered the paraphrases of the paragraphs' main ideas, so the QR coded sentences were out of order from the original text. Then I formed small groups, made sure at least one student from the group had a smart phone and had downloaded the QR code scanner. Then students scanned the codes, wrote down the out-of-order sentences on a collection sheet, and then after they got all the paraphrases, they reordered them as they appeared in the original text. Thus, this activity works with their basic comprehension of the ideas.

Saad and Ahmed decoding!

To make this a game, I told students I would offer bonus points for the group that completed it first and accurate. The bonus points were really a small, insignificant amount, and I am not usually one to bribe students, but they like it, and the points become more of a trophy.

Finally, we debriefed the text and ideas after the game element, and, honestly, students seemed to understand the ideas well -- though, granted, this text's ideas are relatively informational and straight-forward. Also, students seemed to enjoy it, were engaged and thought it was a neat way to work with text. I asked a couple of my students what they thought, and they said it was helpful and interesting -- though what else are they going to say to someone who grades them?

So that's it. Below are the basic sheets I created so you don't have to read through everything above to get the essentials.

Please let me know what you think of this activity, and PLEASE let me know if you do something similar. I would love to hear your ideas! :-)

Reading I used
QR Code Generator Web site
Collection Sheets
Scrambled QR Codes with Paraphrases