Mission Impossible, QR Style

I’m on a mission, a secret mission. To avert an international library crisis, I’ve come up with a clever solution to a nagging problem: teaching students to search the library catalog and then find ON THE SHELVES that which they’ve found in the library catalog.

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/midcentarc/8177501666/sizes/m/in/photostream/ using Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode

While introducing this lesson, I play the Mission Impossible theme song and explaining to students their secret mission--should they choose to accept it. I hand to them their secret agent tools and send them off to scavenge the library.

Enter, QR codes. I have students in 3rd and 4th grades complete a series of scavenger hunts. I begin with location hunts: Where is the reference section? Which book in the library has the most words? Find the 398.2 section.

Images from Liberty Lady

Each student utilizes an iPad and a QR paddle. After scanning the QR, students see a “clue.” I then ask them to photograph the relevant section and bring me the “evidence” of their search.

Sound like a TON of effort? Not if you follow these steps:

1. Open the Google Chrome browser

2. In the address bar enter the following:

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=150x150&cht=qr&chl=

(To alter the size of the QR code, change the 150x150 in the URL to a number of your choice. The numbers must match to maintain the square shape.)

3. At the end of this URL, enter your clue. For example:

PHOTOGRAPH the Reference Section

4. Press Enter. Your QR code will appear. If you copy it, you can paste the QR into any document.

As the weeks pass, students complete more complicated scavenger hunts using our traditional catalog interface or Destiny Quest. They must then bring me further “evidence” of their find. My goal is to teach students to do this ALL BY THEMSELVES.

Mission Accomplished? I think so.

**For more QR code ideas see my post, “How to Use QR Codes in Your School Library.”

Still Learning . . . WEMTA Inspirations

Technology, you fickle beast, you change so frequently. Just when I think I've got one facet of your character nailed down, you go and develop another. 

~ ~ ~ ~

Nope. Not me. I don't feel that way. (Okay, Twitter had me on edge for a stretch. I was not getting it. I'm now Twittified. No worries.)

It's a good thing I love a tough puzzle. Nothing pleases me more than discovering something, learning about it, and figuring out how to use it! New (to me) uses for technologies inspire me. At WEMTA, I learned about using technologies for unintended projects. Creativity knows no bounds when grown-ups and students alike are given a range of choices. 

I've been trying this out in the library, giving students a scavenger hunt "Mission" and asking them to "spy" on the library stacks. Then, I charge them with providing me "evidence" using an App of their choice. I've ended up with a variety of app use: Camera, iMovie, Notes, Explain Everything, and more. Good times, happy kids, great outcomes.

Here's a CREATIVE post from "The Busy Librarian" about using programs other than Power Point to make presentations: The Busy Librarian: So Long, Powerpoint. I love this post. I love that Matthew Winner eulogized Power Point. If only I were clever enough to think this stuff up!

What's the point of this post? Try new things! Winner inspired me to try out PowToon. I'm now a convert. I've got a PowToon in the queue for a presentation I'm giving next week.

Time Travel . . . I mean, book club.

Yesterday I spent some time discussing with a group of fifth graders the merits and complications of time travel. No, we weren't holding a monthly Doctor Who fan club, we were discussing the When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

Bogged down by the changing nature of her friendship with Sal, her intelligent but fashion challenged mother, and the strange goings on with new friend Marcus, Miranda changes in this novel from young girl to young woman. ("They" describe this as a coming of age novel, which I've always found to be a goofy expression.)

It's hard to describe all that takes place in this story without giving away the ending--which is fabulous and comes together in the final twenty pages--so I just tell students to trust me and read the book. (It does have a great connection to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Spoiler.)

Readying for the discussion, I realized I wanted to "shake it up" and try something other than my regular Twizzlers-while-we-talk-routine. So, I pulled out book making supplies and we set to work making paper bag books while talking about THIS great book.

Thanks to Carol Ruth Carlin and Madeline Huston I've had a lovely introduction to book making.

Image from Amazon

Check out The Book Making Experience: An Educator's Guide for Student Made Books for great ideas you can use in both classroom and library.

Here are my supplies:

Image from Liberty Library Lady

Here is my (unfinished) example:

Image from Liberty Library Lady

Here are some of the (unfinished) results:

Image from Liberty Library Lady

Image from Liberty Library Lady

Image from Liberty Library Lady

This worked out SO well. We enjoyed working with our hands while talking about Miranda and Sal. We discussed ways Miranda could have been a better friends to Julia, Colin, and Annemarie. We talked about Miranda's mother. And Miranda's mother's crazy bright tights. (She works at a law office, for goodness sake, bright magenta tights are a no-no!) We figured out Marcus and The Old Man's role in the story.

In addition, all technical problems and moral dilemmas involving time travel were solved. We created a TARDIS and reenacted our favorite scenes from last season's Doctor Who. Wait. That didn't happen. I just wish it had happened. I really want to meet a Time Lord.

I'm the winner for a happy Wednesday book club with a super group of fifth graders!

First lines . . . the first

"GRAMPS SAYS I AM A COUNTRY GIRL AT HEART, and that is true."

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Image from Titlepeek

POGO STICK Books

Image from reboundair.com

Friends, there exist in my library realm POGO STICK books. (Not a technical term--a Liberty Lady creation.) These books have cover art and titles that make a grown up roll her eyes. These books include an element of the ridiculous. These books seem dumb.

Kids know better. These same books make them laugh, don't require intense cognitive effort, and occasionally involve a little bathroom humor. These books are POGO STICK books--they help the reader pogo to another type of story.

Image from Barnes & Noble

Gary Paulsen is one of my faves. He's my go-to author for wilderness adventure books. Here's the thing: not all scholars love to read a coming of age story set in the forest. Let me tell you, they are missing out BIG TIME. Gary's work is vast and varied. 

I hand wilderness adverse students Lawn Boy. Gary wrote Lawn Boy, but it's a different kind of book. The cover art is mischievous, the story clever. While this book contains no bathroom humor with it's carefully crafted message of independence and self-reliance, it appeals to the same crowd. Lawn Boy is a pogo stick book to Hatchet,Brian's Return, Brian's Hunt, and Brian's Winter. 

More POGO STICK authors? Jim Benton. Andrew Clements. Dan Gutman. Megan McDonald.