Scan this QR code to see a super creative use of the technology from 2006.
Tried using a QR (quick response) code yet? Popular for the last decade in Japan, they’ve been gaining popularity here more recently and the mobile learning world is abuzz with their potential for bridging the gap between virtual and physical information for richer learning possibilities. If you haven’t already, create your own QR code, and try reading this one with your smart phone’s camera … you may have to download a QR reader, first (this one has a handy illustrated how-to).
“Essentially, the power of QR codes is in their ability to allow learners to use their mobile devices to link to specific information on the internet quickly and easily. It’s connection to mobile learning appears to be a natural one as it’s often a mobile device that is used to decode the QR codes and to access the information provided through the QR code on the Internet.” (Rob De Lorenzo, The Mobile Learner: QR Codes and Mobile Learning, Nov. 17, 2010)
“Last month, Google formally released its URL shortener Goo.gl, which included the ability to create QR codes by adding “.qr” to the end of a shortened URL. Bit.ly followed up last week with a similar feature, allowing users to create QR codes that lead back to a link. Google has already been pushing the codes as a way to download Android apps. It also launched Favorite Places on Google, which involved distributing 100,000 QR code stickers to local businesses. The shortener tools are a simple way to make QR codes and could help ease adoption, by making people not just scanners but creators of QR codes.” (Alan Ball: Gigaom: Are QR Codes Ready for their Close-up?, Oct. 11, 2010)
But is newer technology is already signalling what may lie beyond the QR fad?
Leonard Low wrote on November 8 of this year in his blog post, QR Codes: Here today but gone tomorrow? “I increasingly think will be supplanted by visual searching (e.g. Google Goggles) and mobile text recognition (both typeface and handwritten) within about five years … I still see QR Codes as being a useful tool for mobile and situated learning in the present day, but I have never been content to simply look at the present without looking towards the future; and in that future, I see QR Codes becoming rapidly redundant.”
(Image of code in field taken from Hello, World!)
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