Ever since I discovered QR codes last year, Â I knew I wanted to find a way to use QR codes to share videos with parents. Thanks to one of those serendipitous hallway conversations with a parent/co-worker, I was finally able to figure out how to make it work using dropbox! To read more about how to create basic QR codes that aren’t linked to videos, visit this page on this website. To learn how to attach a video to a QR code, keep reading!
We took our annual Fall trip to the pumpkin patch last week. As usual, the kids had loads of fun. I wanted the children to have the opportunity to share about their experience.  Since they are not yet doing much writing,  I decided I wanted to give them a chance to develop their oral language skills.  I asked each child to tell me a story about our trip to the pumpkin patch and I recorded a video of them on the iPad while they were speaking.  The range of storytelling ability surprised me.  Many of the children modeled their story after the back to school videos we made a month ago. They spoke in voices that were bordering on robotic: “My. favorite. part. was. picking. pumpkins.” Others went into great detail sharing multi-sentence, detail rich accounts of their pumpkin patch adventures. I think next time I might do a bit more pre-teaching with regard to how to craft an oral narrative account. I think some of them just weren’t quite sure what to say. We also had some fabulous pumpkin art that we had created in our art class.  After putting our pumpkins on the wall, I added each child’s name to their art work followed by a QR code that linked to each child’s video.
Here’s how I attached a video to a QR Code:
1. First I recorded a video of each child on the iPad using the camera/video feature
2. I uploaded each video to my dropbox account. Â It was actually a very simple process. Â I already had a dropbox account on the ipad and had it set to upload any pictures/videos that I took. (Just download the app and set up an account to make this happen. It’s in the app store.)
3. Once the videos were uploaded from the iPad, Â I used my laptop. Â I logged into my dropbox account online by visiting dropbox.com. One there, I clicked on my “camera uploads.” Â All of my videos that were on my ipad, were now on my dropbox account.
4. One at a time, Â I clicked on each video that I wanted to make a QR code for. After I clicked on the video, a screen popped up. In the lower right corner of that screen there is a literal image of a link you can click on to “share the video with a link.”
Once you click that, Â a dialog box pops up. On the bottom right corner of that dialog box, there is a place to click “get link.”
5. Once I had a link for a specific video, I pasted that link into my favorite QR code creator. Â I saved the QR code that was created and named it after the child in the video so that I could keep track of them.
6. I printed out all of the QR codes and pasted the code for each child next to a large print out of  his or her name. I put the name and QR code under each child’s pumpkin artwork. We ended up with a pretty neat interactive bulletin board.
7. The last thing I did was write up a brief overview of QR codes and their use for the parents of children in my class. Â I knew some of them (like the one who helped me figure out dropbox) would have no problem figuring out what to do with a QR code. Â I also knew that others weren’t so tech savvy and would need some support. Â It was for those parents that I posted the overview off to the side. Â I also suspect that there will be a few parents that may not even realize that there is a video attached to their child’s artwork. For them, I plan to include a something in our newsletter that explains the concept.
I still think QR codes are just plain fun. Â I think they can spice up what might otherwise be a boring task or display. Â They added a little pizzazz to our children’s artwork. Â I’m not sure they are the most efficient way to share videos with parents though. Â They are fun, but tedious, for both me and the parents. It was much easier to put together and share the iMovie video we did earlier in the year, and I think I ended up with a nicer finished product. Â Still, the QR codes did add a little excitement to our pumpkin art work.
For those of you interested in how we created the pumpkins: I can’t take credit. Â They are the product of our amazing art teacher. Â I can tell you that the first thing we did was paint a fall color (brown, orange, red or yellow) onto an entire piece of yellow or orange construction paper. Next we created designs in the paint using really cool “scrapers” that our art teacher has. Â We repeated this process for one or two layers. Â After the paper had time to dry, we cut out pumpkin shapes. Finally, we glued the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. onto the pumpkins. I love the way each pumpkin turned out a little bit different.
Thank you, thank you for sharing this! I have been searching for a way not to use YouTube because of all kinds of network/iPad/compatibility & permissions issues and this does the trick!
I’m so glad you found it helpful!