Tuesday 3 June 2008

QRcode as a great surplus for real life architecture or history classes


In my ever ongoing quest to link QRcodes to eLearning I had a new idea (well new in the Roman way = building on what exists and turning it in something a bit different): displaying information on buildings or surfaces of any kind in order to deliver on the go, on site and at the right time content to learners.

Adrian Nicolaiev got me onto this great PhD research blog from Simone O’Callaghan on QRcodes: http://elusivesprite.squarespace.com/phd_journal/

After starting to read her inspiring blog (she works on a PhD which balances between art and QRcodes, how cool is that!) I came across the site of ‘invisible art’ which is an art project that adds artistic impressions onto buildings through the active use of a cell phone camera. Invisible art is part of the Spellbinder initiative at the University of Edinburgh.

The idea behind the principle is easy: see a building, take a picture with you cell phone, send it to a designated phone number and in return you get a picture with much more information on it. This could be done with pure QRcoding too.

So I was thinking: what if you would link this type of acting to a class that benefits from walking around in the city? Just imagine that you are teaching a history class, which features types of architectures from different eras. Then you could construct a mobile tour in a specific city. You walk the tour as a learner and when you pass a building of which you think it is build in a Roman style or Gothic style you take a photograph .Put up a QRcode on the spot where the learner needs to take a picture of the building or needs to examine the building or space. This code opens up more information, or just the course relevant answer.

Does anyone want to attract me as a consultant on a similar project? Hallo iemand? Anybody? Quelqu’un?

2 comments:

  1. I guess the obvious step is to link the two ideas you have here about QR Codes and have QR codes on a tour path or just randomly around the city which link to short quizzes (made on http://www.mobilestudy.org/ naturally!)

    Maybe they could incorporate an element of 'letterboxing' (a kind of cross country game also called geo-caching I think) so that people have to answer the question or clue to find the location of the next QR Code.

    Just some brain storming ideas. Great inspiring blog, Thanks

    Dave

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  2. hi Dave
    That is indeed a creative way to expand qrcodes as a learning application. Thanks for brainstorming!

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