QR Code Trail for Book Week

Tomorrow signals the start of Book Week 2015.  Our school has a whole pile of fun events planned - including a fancy dress parade on Thursday (eek!) - including a reading themed  'open house' tomorrow afternoon. We've turned our timetables upside down and are running our literacy blocks after lunch instead of before recess so that parents, grandparents, neighbours, family friends and anyone else interested, can  come and take a peek at the awesome literacy learning we've got going on!

We'll see how it goes. Last year we tried a literacy themed open house one morning and had very few visitors. One of the ways we're hoping to entice more people in this year is with the chance to win a book voucher. We're just that nice! Joking. We totally are that nice, but not made of money so to be in the running to win the book voucher people will need to answer a series of questions based on videos that they'll access using QR codes that will be placed around the school.

Fun idea huh?  I thought so. (Of course I did. I helped come up with it!) I even volunteered to make the trail. It'll be fun I said. It'll be a great learning opportunity I said. It'll be easy I said.

And it has been fun. It has a HUGE learning experience. It has been... Well... OK, it hasn't been easy at all.

I booked a reliever for a half day to get the filming done. And then a meeting was booked, so I lost most of my filming time. Not a huge problem, but it took a little longer than I expected and I was left with less than 2 lessons to film. A lot of the filming I needed to do was in my building, which meant I was right there to witness my kiddos' awful behaviour. Again, not a huge problem, but dealing with it ate up more of my time. A 'social media' related issue broke while I was in the building and I ended up sitting in on the initial discussions with some of the students involved. I'm glad I was there for it, but again... Time was ticking away.  I am so grateful to the teachers who lent me students for filming, rearranged their schedules to let me film and particularly to Ms Sally Slattery who filmed the junior primary students for me.

iMovie is not a daily use programme for me. In fact I'm pretty inexperienced. The movies are OK, but I can't see Spielberg calling anytime soon. I'm so pleased I pushed through and feel much more confident now.  I can't wait to do more movie making with the kiddos now - usually I feel really out of my depth but think I might be able to offer more meaningful advice now.

YouTube is driving me mad. To be fair, it's not YouTube's fault.  The internet speed at my house has been heinously slow on weekends ever since Netflix hit Australia. In the end I packed up my computer and head over to a friend's house with a bottle of red wine and my best puppy dog face. He works at home for HP so usually has a super quick connection. Even there it took a couple of hours! Not happy!!

Next up are the QR codes. No major problems there. Although when I printed the codes and questions I discovered that my son had left some delightful green paper in the tray and we're almost out of black ink. Of course we are. Nevermind. I'll either use these or reprint in the morning at school.  If only my laminator hadn't gone missing during the last school holidays... Hmmmm.

This whole process is gambling on participants having QR code readers on their devices. We've invited them to come to the school library before starting the trail and my kiddos will help them download one if necessary.  Keep your fingers crossed that the school internet is playing nicely! (It hasn't been for the last couple of days.)

I'll update tomorrow when I get some feedback from participants.  I so hope it works, but am pleased to have done what I have even if not a single soul participates because I've learnt a lot.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Standard 6 Professional engagement

Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community