This week one of the girls in my class of Year Fours (8 year olds) was feeling poorly with winter chills and not much in the mood for algebra. She was keen on the idea of making her own QR code treasure trail around the school. She was not about to participate meaningfully in the maths I had planned so I thought I would let her go for it and see how it all worked out.

She used the free app Easy QR on my iPod Touch to create the codes. Easy QR, as well as scanning codes, can be used to create them. She used the text option on the opening screen. She was then taken to a text page to write in her message for the treasure trail.

She clicked GENERATE and the QR code was born!

She then took a screen grab of each of the stations in her treasure trail (Press the home button at the same time as the ON/OFF button – it’s a bit tricky as if you push the ON/OFF button first you just end up switching the iPod Touch off!). We had already mastered that skill by taking taking screen grabs of our best scores of MathTappers Number Find.

As I don’t have Air Printer or Printopia she had to email me each of the screengrabs and I printed them out. She tried to show stealth as she laid the trail out over lunch time and started her classmates off on the trail after lunch.

It was great, spur of the moment sort of activity that was enjoyed by all.