Back to School Night with QR Codes

Over the last couple of years, the traditional back-to-school night of 'set and get' presentations to parents has slowly started to fade. More and more districts and educators have moved to a more informal presentation and welcome to the classroom - my own district included. The flexibility really helps with parents' busy schedules or juggling visiting multiple teachers for multiple children.

The idea of an open house is simply opening up a building for visitors. Less formal, parents can walk around and mingle with other parents and see teachers. Parents aren't assigned a schedule with activities to complete in each room. (Honestly, parents have a lot to do to get their children ready for our rooms - do they really need to attend a class before our class?)

This year, I've decided to use QR codes for quick videos on tools we're going to use in class, books we're going to read, and strategies I plan to teach. This means that parents can investigate the ideas/subjects they're curious about and chat with me about them at their leisure while I get to know them and their students.

So, here's a quick run-through of what I've done to prepare (or you can skip to the two minute tutorial I have at the bottom):

1. I searched YouTube for various videos on the tools, content, and strategies I plan to implement (or I made my own videos by screencasting or dabbling in iMovie).

Plus five points if you decide to make your own videos. This is a great way to introduce parents/students to yourself (but can be time consuming if you're in a crunch). I've found, when it comes to most content, strategies, tools, there are already great videos in YouTube for use. CommonLit already had videos explaining (and marketing) their tools and various other larger educational sites do as well. It is easy to find a quick video book review of a novel I plan to teach. And, I made a quick video version of the first assignment I plan to have students work on in my class so that parents can preview the work I ask kids to do (and see a little about me).

2. I found the "Share" option on the video, copied the share URL and pasted it here: https://www.qr-code-generator.com/ which will gave me a downloadable QR Code JPG (picture). I downloaded the image.

3. Imbed, Drag, Paste that image into a Word or Google Document with a short description, print, and display for display.

Because I was working in Google Chrome, hopping between tabs, I was able to just drag the downloaded QR (which shows up in the lower tray) into the document.

**4. This is bonus. For the first day of school, I plan to save these QR code stations and have students station rotation through the videos in groups.

I plan to have each group write down one question he/she has about the video/tool/assignment/content and one take-away to keep in mind for my class. At the end of rotations, I hope to have a reflective discussion and answer questions. This is also a great way to teach the transition rules early in the classroom, get to know the students as they move and interact with one another, drawing conclusions.

Below is a short tutorial screencast video I made explaining how to quickly create a QR code to a YouTube Video:

In addition to this, I created 'business cards' by putting my contact information on a business card sized piece of paper with a QR code to my syllabus (which is also digital). I printed them out on good old "oak tag" paper and cut them out to hand out to parents at the open house and to students the first day. This way parents always have my contact info in their wallets if they need it - unlike various large handouts which may inevitably end up laying on the kitchen table or getting lost in other piles of papers.

There are a few other back-to-school open house ideas on this post by Dr. Stephanie Hatten which one may find useful. I love the idea of a virtual open house or utilizing augmented reality. I may try to include something like that in the Smore newsletter I plan to send out during the first weeks of school.

Happy back-to-school season!