Russel Tarr has written an excellent outline of how he makes use of QR codes to engage learners outside of lesson time. Russel explains his delivery of History Mysteries in this article.

This post is based on Russel’s idea – but with a slight change of approach. Instead of going for a Mystery approach I’ve adapted the idea to work for an activity I used a few years ago.

Understanding the Weimar Republic is pretty difficult for pupils to grasp. They ‘get’ a lot of the politics but often see it in isolation from cultural changes etc. To try and get pupils to see the connection between different elements of Weimar Society I simply ‘borrowed’ their timetables… In each department a few examples of achivements, changes or events relating to that particular subject area during the Weimar era were left – and colleagues asked niely to refer to them when teaching any GCSE history students.

Russel’s QR Code generator and Mystery trail made me realise that it can be done in a much less intrusive manner. Instead of bullying my way into the classrooms of colleagues, the same could be achieved through placing QR codes around the various departments and Faculties. I know from past experience that getting History content into other departments has a lot of benefits – it engages colleagues, can lead to collaboration in other ways and helps pupils to make links between different subjects.

The actual content of the QR codes could be anything from questions to tasks or prompts to find out more about something.