I first got interested in barcodes and mobile phones when I discovered I could scan UPC at the store and look up prices and reviews from my G1 Google phone. ShopSavvy and Compare Everywhere are still two of the most popular Android apps on the Android Market. But a recent post to the UNESCO OER list led me to think about applying 2D barcodes to mobile learning.
At a very basic level, I can imagine a lecture where the last powerpoint slide is a 2D barcode which includes the presenter’s contact info or a link to the presentation on slideshare. and a URL. 2D barcodes are quite common in Japan, in magazines and on billboards. For those with a camera-enabled cell phone, there’s no need to write down the URL or contact info.
I am part of a graduate class that is designing a location-based game for a local museum. We are putting a lot of time designing a game that will work on PCs and a limited number of GPS-enbled, PocketPC and Garmin devices using an application called WhereIGo. But what if the same game could be designed using 2D barcodes, so that anyone with a web-enabled camera phone could play? More and more cell phones now come with built-in 2D barcode readers, not just smart phones. Does anyone know of a game engine that uses 2D barcode readers? Just curious.
So how do you make these fancy barcodes, you ask? One of the easiest ways is on a site called Kaywa. Anyone can create a 2D barcode that represents a web link, a vCard, a phone number, or some hidden text (like a clue or something). Another option is called Snappr.net. But unfortunately, Snappr.net insists on linking back to itself, even for basic contact info. So don’t use it if you want an independent 2D barcode that doesn’t require web access. Still, Snappr.net has some neat functionality like the barcodes survey below. Instead of banning cell phones from our public schools, why don’t we start using them to engage students and other learners?
Here is a 2D barcode that will load a survey. You can take it from almost any mobile phone with a camera and web access. (If you don’t already have barcode scanner for your phone, visit http://code.google.com/p/zxing/wiki/GetTheReader.)
If you want to read more here’s an interesting post on mobile learning with 2D barcodes: http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/2008/07/qr-codesintegration-into-learning.html. It looks like a company called BrightCookie is already working on making this technology work in Moodle. I would like to see it implemented as a mobile game.
Hi Tom,
Nice article. Regarding mobile games using 2D codes – there is already one around I am aware of: http://qrcode.es/?p=209&language=en
As for our Moodle integration (I work at Brightcookie.com) this depends largely on the availability of Moodle content that can be presented on the device. Creating the barcodes is the easy part. Making sure the content is available in a format that can easily be displayed on mobiles was the hard part so far. But this is changing as handsets are improving and data-access on handsets becomes more ubiquitous. But 2D codes are a great (and cheap) way of putting context to real-world objects.
We have some pilot projects ready if there is some interest. Hopefully we have some real-life projects going ahead in March.
Cheers from down under,
Leo
@Leo Gaggl
Thanks Leo! I did a follow up post on that game. I have done more with GPS/location-based games at this point, but this gets tricky indoors. I hope to be able to implement an instructional game based on these codes at some point. I would love to hear more about how you are implementing 2D codes into Moodle.
Best,
Tom
I started getting interested in bar codes after playing around with Shop Savy on the G1. There are number of ways in which these codes can also be used to transfer information in interesting ways. You mentioned games, sharing contact information and learning. I can imagine integrating QR codes with text-to-speech to enable content to be read aloud.
@Mervyn
Interesting! This could be interesting for tourist attractions, where you could point your camera phone to the QR code next to the appropriate flag and have the caption read to you in a particular language. I can imagine children’s books done this way as well. It would make sense to have a way to set your language first, so one QR code might work in multiple languages. Thanks for sharing.