DA op-ed: How to share student videos with QR codes

Follow these steps to share student videos in any space in your school
Monica Burns is an educator, author and edtech consultant, and she will be a featured speaker at DA's FETC 2020.
Monica Burns is an educator, author and edtech consultant, and she will be a featured speaker at DA’s FETC 2020.

When I visit classrooms and talk with teachers about the ways they use technology to share student work, I’m always so happy to hear that QR codes are still part of the conversation. Although there are lots of ways to share student work, QR codes are a fantastic way to give everyone access. It places student work in a space that fits the context of their creations too.

Share student videos with QR codes

If you haven’t used QR codes before, they are special codes you can scan with a QR scanning app. Anyone can make a QR code and assign a website to that code. This way when someone scans a QR code, they go directly to the link you want them to access.

QR codes are an excellent way to share videos students create. It involves just one extra step, and it’s totally free to do too. First, students can create a video and save it to a link. Some video tools publish student videos to a link. If students have a file saved to their device instead, they can upload it to a file sharing service and access a shareable link that way instead.

Then, paste the link into a QR code generator. You might use a website like QRstuff.com. This website is just one option for creating QR codes. There are plenty of free QR code-generating websites and even a few apps that will do this for you too.

After you create your QR code, you will see a link that lets you download your QR code as a picture file. Once you have this file, you can print it out and share it with others. Anyone with a smartphone or tablet connected to a wireless or cellular network can then scan the QR code with a QR code scanner app to access the website. I-nigma is one example of a QR code scanner app, but there are a lot of apps that do this too.


Read: DA op-ed: 5 tips to help prepare for your next teacher webinar


QR codes to share videos

Sharing a link with a QR code lets you place student work anywhere you like. You might place student work on a bulletin board to show off book trailers or create an interactive map with students where they create videos showcasing different parts of your state. A QR code “sticks” a video in any spot you like it. 

QR codes also eliminate issues with typing in a link to shared a video. If your students use an LMS like Schoology or Google Classroom, they can post the links to their videos in this shared space. But if students want to share their videos with someone else, they’ll have to send them an email with a link to click on or ask them to type in the long link to their video. Creating a QR code eliminates this step. All their audience will have to do is scan the QR code and press play to watch their video.

There are lots of tools students can use to make movies. Ben Forta and I even wrote a book, 40 Ways to Inject Creativity in the Classroom with Adobe Spark and includes lots of classroom ideas. You can also download this free set of graphic organizers to use with students as they create videos too.

As students create videos, they can use QR codes to share them with the world. I can’t wait to see what you and your students create and share this school year.


Monica Burns is an educator, author and edtech consultant, and she will be a featured speaker at DA’s FETC 2020. Visit her site, ClassTechTips.com, for more ideas for your classroom.

Monica Burns
Monica Burnshttps://classtechtips.com/
Monica Burns is an ed-tech and curriculum consultant, author of "EdTech Essentials" (ASCD, 2021) and former New York City public school teacher. She works with schools and organizations around the world to support preK-20 educators with technology integration. Monica’s website ClassTechTips.com and Easy EdTech Podcast helps educators place “tasks before apps” by promoting deeper learning with technology.

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