Many teachers are beginning to see the benefits of using QR codes in the classroom. If you’re not familiar with QR codes, they are black and white pictures (similar to the barcodes that appear on items of food etc.). When you scan the QR code with a special application (many of which are free and available for computers / smart phones / mobile devices), special messages can be revealed, contact details can be shared and (sometimes long and complicated) web addresses can be visited easily.

Here are some other examples of how teachers are using QR codes with their pupils:

• Tom Barrett has used QR codes in his classroom and has shared a number of useful suggestions for using them to help children to access a range of digital resources. He has also started an ‘Interesting Ways’ presentation, which currently has 26 suggestions for using QR codes in education. You can view the presentation here and on Ideas to Inspire.
• The pupils in David Mitchell’s class have stuck them into their Literacy books, as a way of encouraging those looking at the books to visit a copy of their work online and read the comments that had been added there!
• Kerry Turner has used QR codes in a number of ways. I was particularly impressed with the idea of printing them on sticky labels and using them to share useful sites / important information with students.
• James Michie has written a detailed account of the use of QR codes in education, which contains a number of ideas and lots of links to explore.
• Dughall has also written an interesting review of QR codes, which includes some ideas for using a related tool called Stickybits.

I have  recently created QR codes for all of my Teaching Websites, along with all of the Teaching Themes. You can download a poster which shows all of these, should you wish to use the codes to visit the sites. Download the poster here.

If you’re planning to use my Internet tutorial, Welcome to the Web, it might be useful to print the relevant code for children to enable them to access the site more easily.

Have you used QR codes in the classroom?

A Teachmeet is a conference organised for teachers, by teachers. They are much less formal than other conferences that you might have been to, allowing teachers to share (and celebrate) their own classroom experiences with each other.

I’ve never been to a Teachmeet before, so I’m very excited to be attending my first one in a few weeks… on Friday 18th September at The Hop Farm, Paddock Wood. The event is free and takes place from 7pm until 9pm. If you’re involved in education and you’re able to get there, come along!

Find out more (and sign up if you plan to come) on the wiki… and if you’re able to give a presentation, add yourself to the list!

Many people use the ‘Bookmarks’ or ‘Favorites’ feature of their web browser to save links to their favourite sites. Did you know that you can also save your bookmarks online, using sites like Delicious?

This has a number of benefits:

• You can access your bookmarks online, from any computer that has an internet connection. So, you can save bookmarks from a home computer and access them at school, and vice versa.
• You can save huge numbers of bookmarks… adding lots of bookmarks to your browser’s collection can mean that things get cluttered and disorganised. Online bookmarking sites usually use ‘tags’ to help you sort and search through your bookmarks, meaning that you can save hundreds / thousands of them without things getting jumbled.
• Online bookmarking allows you to share new and useful sites. For me, this is the biggest benefit. By connecting with other teachers, I can see the sites that they are bookmarking, and they can see my bookmarks too. I often browse through the bookmarks of people in my ‘network’ and discover lots of interesting web sites.

If you’re not using it already, sign up with Delicious and follow my bookmarks… you can find them at www.delicious.com/markjwarner. We also have a delicious account for our school’s bookmarks, which allow us to share useful sites with staff, children and parents. Have you tried online bookmarking yet?

Twitter always seems to be in the news lately. If you’ve not tried it out, why not? It allows you to post 140 character messages to others… sometimes people use it to share what they’re doing at different points in time. However, it’s also a great way of connecting with others and there is a large community of teachers who use it to:

• share ideas and experiences,
• ask questions and get support,
• recommend sites and resources,
• collaborate on joint projects.

If you’re looking for people to follow on Twitter, don’t forget that you can follow my accounts @TeachingIdeas / @markw29. Then browse around at the lists of people who I follow / who follow me – there are some wonderful educators out there, and Twitter enables you to get in touch with them.

I’ve recently added some wonderful pictures to our gallery of Teaching Photos. Thank you to Kimberley and Danielle for sharing their photographs.

If you have any photos of displays that you are able to share with others, please email them to mark@teachingideas.com and I’ll put them online as soon as I can. Thank you!