Digital Learning Day and a Freebie

Arkansas Digital Learning Day is May 21st!    This year my students took part in a digital learning project for Black History Month. 

Graphic courtesy of digitallearningday.org
Each student was given a famous Black American to research.  I gave them a wide range of historical figures from recent history to long ago. They had to write three (3) unique facts about their person. 
Students were given informational text to read and researched to get their information.  This part of the project took a couple of weeks as I helped them navigate the different websites and taught them how to find "unique" facts about their individual. This activity fit perfectly into our current study of fact vs. opinion, too!
Some students did this part of the project at home, while others used the computers in class to research their famous person.  They used websites such as, GoGooligans and KidsClick which are both kid-safe websites.
After writing their facts down on paper, students used an app called, Croak.It to record themselves reading their reports.

Croak.It is a great FREE app that records up to 30 seconds of speaking and creates a URL of the recording. 
Here, my students are reading their reports using my microphone with Croak.It recording their voices on the iPad.

We took URL of their recorded projects and copied/pasted them onto the website:  www.qrstuff.com.  This generated the QR code of their recorded reports. 
We spent a couple of days becoming "QR Code Experts" while sitting in small groups and learning how to use Croak.It and learning to scan the QR codes. They enjoyed listening to each other's reports so much they choose this as an inside recess activity!  
It's neat to see them teaching one another how to use the technology and sharing what they learned about their projects, too!

Here's an example from one of my student's reports about Jackie Joyner- Kersee:

         

Graphic by Educlips 
Students cut and pasted their QR codes to their written reports and created an interactive bulletin board outside of the classroom.  They also created a class book called, "Let's Discover: Black History Month". 

The interactive bulletin board my students create is a resource used for more than just my classroom.  Students from all over the building come by to use our iPods and iPads to scan the QR codes and listen to the reports.  My students, or "QR Experts" as they like to be called, teach the others how to use the scanning app, line it up with the QR code, and listen!
As an added surprise, each student in my classroom receives their own copy of the class book to take home at the end of the week!
Click the image below to get a free sample copy of my Black History QR Code Book Project.  It's black and white and ready to print.

This freebie will also be featured and available at:

For a full, color-version of this activity, click the color image below. There are 25 famous Black American report pages and detailed instructions on how to do this project in your classroom. 

Happy Teaching! You may also like these fun QR Code books, too: