Are QR codes redundant?

It seems only a short while since we first became aware of Quick Response (QR) codes. In fact, they have been around since 1994, and were originally created to enable the Japanese car manufacturing giant Toyota to track its vehicles during the manufacturing process. Now QR tags are just about everywhere you look, including advertising hoardings, buses and trains, magazines and even coins. They are essentially two dimensional bar codes that you can scan using your mobile device. The beauty (if you can call it that) of the QR tag is that it will quickly take your mobile device browser to a web site with no other effort than a button click. But as many users will tell you, scanning a QR code can be a little hit and miss.

QR codes have polarised the education community over their usefulness. Some argue that they have no real use beyond faddishness and 'wow' factor, whilst other educators are forging ahead, developing ideas for their pedagogical use. Slowly over the last few years, educational uses have begun to emerge, with some pedagogical applications already being tried out in authentic contexts. And yet, even while QR codes in education are still in their emergent state, questions are being asked about their future, and whether they have already become redundant.

Enter Blippar, an augmented reality tool that is hailed as the QR killer. Apparently it can do everything QR codes can do, but a whole lot more too. I first heard of Blippar when I picked up the November 2012 issue of the ShortList magazine, currently the most widely circulated free men's lifestyle magazine in the UK. The banner headline read 'Special Interactive Gaming Issue', which immediately piqued my interest. From cover to cover, the magazine features, articles, adverts and editorial are all marked with a small yellow 'Scan this page for more' symbol. Using the downloadable app from Blippar, readers can capture the image of the page, which takes them to an interactive website or gaming application. Blippar's managing director Jessica Butcher is fairly triumphant about what she naturally considers to be the advantages of Blippar over QR tags, declaring 'Rather than adding an ugly black and white pixellated box to an ad creative, Blippar can take the creative itself (the whole poster, a logo, the product itself) as the trigger for an interactive engagement.'

She has a point. We certainly wouldn't wish to ruin the aesthetics of adverts, would we? Seriously, I have always thought QR tags to be a little ugly in their appearance. The Blippar app is designed to recognise an image from almost any angle, at a distance, and even in poor light conditions, depending on the quality of your mobile device camera. This makes it a whole lot more reliable than scanning a QR tag, in my experience at least. Just like QR codes, Blippar can also recognise where the user is geographically through the GPS system on the mobile device they are using. For advertisers this is a distinct advantage, but I can also see many educational uses for these features.

Ultimately, those who are speculating on the future of paper based resources might like to consider Blippar and other similar data capture augmented reality tools. The future is likely to see a combination of paper based and e-books, or more likley a hybrid of paper based and AR enabled products, designed to function together with the user's mobile device, working in concert to provide students with interactive learning experiences wherever they are. Paper is not dead yet. It's just become enhanced.

Read the full article here: Can Blippar make QR codes redundant?

Image by Steve Wheeler


Are QR codes redundant? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

You can't ban the blog

One Scottish local authority has tonight been left with egg all over its face. Argyll and Bute's attempts to censor a 9 year old blogging about her school dinners backfired spectacularly when they were forced to very publicly retract their original decision. The gagging order was imposed on Martha Payne, a primary school girl who attends Lochgilphead Primary School, because she took pictures of her school dinners and then rated them out of 10 on her blog. Although Martha was writing the blog to raise money for charity, and was glowing with praise about some of her dinners, the council decided that not all publicity was good publicity and instructed her head teacher to order her not to take any more photographs of her lunches. The Argyll and Bute council officials thought that newspaper coverage of the 9 year old's blog was causing catering staff to fear for their jobs. But the council backed down due to pressure from the public, ith support from celebrity TV chefs Nick Nairn and Jamie Oliver on Twitter and over the traditional media. The council admitted its mistake and through gritted teeth, a spokesman gave several TV and radio interviews to clarify their position.

Needless to say, the adverse publicity attracted by the council over their reactionary initial decision has reflected positively on Martha's blog, NeverSeconds, which is now receiving thousands of views and dozens of comments each hour. The blog has already amassed over 3 million hits.

The wider issue here is that free speech has many forms, and even children are able to speak out. Primary children such as Martha Payne are able to voice their opinions and gain huge audiences for their writing over the web. They are armed with cameras and mobile phones and they know exactly how to use them. Anyone who underestimates the power of blogging and other forms of social media therefore does so at their peril. And as Argyll and Bute council discovered the hard way yesterday, it is foolish to try to stop children from expressing their ideas publicly. Their decision blew up in their faces, and their only comfort is that Martha's blog has grown in the light of their inadvertent publicity of her work, and is earning even more money for her chosen charity. Go Martha!

Image by Freefoto


You can't ban the blog by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Camera-derie?

The new Nintendo DSi games console will be on sale in UK and US stores as early as first week in April. Here in the UK it is expected to retail for around £150, and will be available in any colour you like, as long as it's black (or white). It has already been available in Japan since November 2008, and has been selling like hot sushi (What?? - Ed.)

According to the report from Webuser, the new DSi still sports the familiar dual screen technology, one of which is a touch screen, but also comes with new features such as a 256 Mb storage space for games downloads. And get this - the DSi also has a pair of tiny cameras, one facing in and one facing out. Sounds like a cue for some cool videoconferencing, possibly in conjunction with Pictochat. Will the DSi cameras create opportinuties for some new forms of social interaction during games playing? Will DS gaming become the new social networking? What new forms of visual collaboration might emerge? We will have to wait and see. But I can't wait, so I will probably get one as soon as they are available in the UK stores. I don't have the yen to fly over to Tokyo, unfortunately. And I wonder if the excellent folk at the Handheld Learning Conference this year will be offering free ones for early bird registrations, like they did last year?