Things I was wrong about: Part 1 QR Codes
As an antidote to the tech gurus pontificating about how they’ve been warning/predicting X for years, I thought I’d consider the things I have been wrong about over the course of my career. The list of all the things I have been wrong about is quite extensive, so I’m limiting it to ed tech here, which still leaves a substantial amount. It’s a more interesting perspective in many ways, why did I think some things would or wouldn’t take off, or they developed in a manner I didn’t predict? Boasting about your failures is not always conducive to developing a successful career, but now I’m of a certain age, it’s a privilege I can indulge. There has been a move in some areas to recognise the value of failure, with Fail Fairs where people talk openly and in a relaxed manner about things that went wrong. This is a bit different from reflecting on which of your views or opinions turned out to be a bit amiss/wildly off the mark/total garbage.
So, I thought I’d do a few posts on things I can now see, that on reflection, I was a freaking idiot about.
We’ll start gently with QR codes. Released in 1994 by the Denso Corporation, QR codes allowed tracking and production in certain industries. The specification for QR coding was made openly available, which meant it was adopted elsewhere, but it remained a fairly specialised tool. As smart phones began to proliferate in the late 2000s, it obtained a wider societal spread.
It was at this time that I used to mock the idea that QR codes were a cool thing to do and would become a useful means of sharing information. Why? Because they were clunky to use, you needed specialist software and they didn’t really have penetration. Now, of course, they are everywhere – even my local pub, not exactly a Portland microbrewery techno-hipster joint, has QR codes for ordering food and drinks. You stick them at the end of presentations for further info instead of people jotting down URLs. They have become ubiquitous in exactly the way I thought they wouldn’t.
Why is that? The key breakthrough was the integration into the camera in smartphones. This in itself relies on almost total uptake of smart phones, and data connectivity. But you could predict those aspects coming to pass, even back in 2008. But it is the easy integration into the existing technology of the camera that elevated them to a tool that the general population will use.
There are a couple of good lessons here. Firstly, it was the open specification that allowed them to spread so widely, you don’t have to pay to create one. Openness wins in this case (you’d think I would have realised this back in the open heyday). Secondly, there is an incremental change in adoption when a technology requires specific knowledge and tools and when it is simply there. We’re probably witnessing this step change with AI as it becomes increasingly incorporated into existing tools. Thirdly, hand in your ed tech badge Weller, you’re done. I wasn’t alone though – I got the featured image from this 2014 page.
8 Comments
Tony Hirst
/Scurries away to see if I can find out what I thought about back in the day… (My current opinion is they are a huge security risk.. and ripe for breaking with a simple black pen…)?
Ah, ha – Chris added them to SplashURL (a Dev8D hack originally completed within a presentation I was giving at the time… https://blog.ouseful.info/2009/03/09/splashurl-now-splashes-qr-codes-to/ ); handy for creating links you can follow if your phone has a camera you’re allowed to use: https://arcadiamashups.blogspot.com/2009/10/visual-links-sharing-links-with-qr.html ; or maybe as a shortcut way to phone mediated payments…. https://blog.ouseful.info/2009/02/23/qr-payments/
mweller
Always ahead of the curve Tony
Tony Hirst
(Also now trying to find write-ups of mockups of including QR codes in the sidebar of OU print materials, which wan one battle I tried to fight for a while then gave up on…)
Lynne Dixon
You certainly weren’t alone. I had no professional or personal interest in even finding out what a QR code was, until I reluctantly became a smartphone user (well after 2014!) & suddenly understood their ubiquity & usefulness.
Alan Levine
I had a similar smack on the head at OER24 when I snapped a photo of many in the crowd hoisting mobiles to grab a link.
And perhaps minor, but as you noted nothing changed with the QR codes themselves, they just got more useful when they no longer required odd apps and steady hands to read.
I remember seeing them prevalent in Japan in 2008, my friend and host pointing out how many businesses used them on signs. And all those projects of putting them in public spaces as a way to provide links to informative sources.
It’s not about being wrong about QRCides, it just needed better cameras!
But go on, blog more wrongness. Heck I once believed in wikis
Leo Havemann
I still believe in wikis!
Leo Havemann
When people started using QR codes in education, like so many things that didn’t exist before, it seemed a bit unnecessary, if harmless, to me, in the sense that people would have to work out what it is and how to scan it and install the app, and wouldn’t a short url be easier. And of course the phones evolved and made them easy to use and it was still unnecessary but actually quite useful. Perhaps someday we will say oh AI seemed unnecessary but turned out the be useful? But then it doesn’t start out harmless.
Ali Syed
While the emergence of QR codes certainly irked many tech pundits, it has been an unmistakable success in its use within the school environment. It has proven a life save regarding teachers posting links for students to access resources via a projection screen QR code. It resulted in a drastic reduction in the amount of time students spend accessing websites and more time learning and exploring.
QR codes now dominate the login process for Grade 1 to 3 students using Chromebooks. In the past, that process was an utter terror. But thanks to the use of QR codes and the integration of Google Workspace for Education accounts via the Clever framework, this has been a thing of the past. Today, students login in under 15 seconds using the QR code process with their assigned Chromebooks.
The use of QR codes in schools has resulted in easier access to information for students, and this alone has made it a valuable tool for educators.