Try your Hand at QR Codes...Introducing Interactive Books!

You heard that right! Today, I'm going to convince you how interactive books (and I'm not talking about downloading titles to your Kindle or Nook!), can enrich and extend some of your more traditional texts. Just the other day, I watched as a 2 year-old buddy of mine stared rather quizzically at her hard cover, two dimensional book, attempting to enlarge the illustration with the classic iPad induced, thumb and pointer finger swipe. Yep, she can navigate any Apple product with ease :)

Unfortunately, not all of us are lucky enough to have a 1 to 1 iPad/Kindle Fire ratio, and I doubt that any of us are willing to dismantle our classroom library in favor of going completely digital, but I do recommend that you check out Farrah Kilgo's newest post at Think*Share*Teach, where she blogs about how her fourth grade kiddos paired up with their second grade pals for some shared reading. These fourth graders created QR codes (Please see my post here re: the nuts and bolts of QR code generation) to accompany a biography about George Washington Carver. Picture this: Small groups of children reading a book...QR codes are embedded throughout to allow for easy access to video clips, primary documents, art, photographs, etc. that bolster the text and add an element of 21st century learning! Pretty neat, huh?

Now, take a breath. These interactive books are very easy to create. In fact, I tried my hand at one a few weeks ago, using Joan Sweeney's whimsical book, Me on the Map, as inspiration. This adorable book provides our youngest students with a basic understanding of location and sense of place, starting in the home and situating the home on a street, in a town, state, country, world, and universe. I decided it would be an even more meaningful read, if I affixed QR codes to each page of the book that corresponded with my students' relative location. So, when the book introduces the notion of a house, situated on a street, I created a QR code that links to Google Earth, so the kiddos can see a picture of where our school sits on the street. It's all about making learning tangible...

Here are 3 simple steps for how to craft interactive books: 1) Generate QR codes, 2) Print QR codes (simply paste them into a Word document), and 3) Attach QR codes to corresponding pages in a book. All your students need is a tablet, smartphone, or iPod to interact with these neat little codes. For more information on how to generate QR codes and/or use them in books, go to Technology Bits Bytes & Nibles where you will find directions with visual accompaniments.

Any ideas for how you might develop an interactive book?