How to make a techy-geeky Easter bulletin board

So, I had a wonderful Easter break. My school is not in session for Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the whole next week. How wonderful! I had a chance to sleep in, stay up late, attend the 2 1/2 hour Easter Vigil, take naps, read books, see a podiatrist, visit my godmother at her assisted living home, had lunch with my aunt at her assisted living home and take her out grocery shopping. Exhausting, right? Oh wait, I have to complete school work too. 

I spent the day up at school today cleaning my desk and completing several odds and end tasks. A brainstorm hit me, wouldn’t it be cool to add QR codes to my Easter bulletin board?  I always add this site to my newsletter. I love how the Easter Pascal greeting is written and spoken for you in 250 languages. 

I thought, how easy, I can just turn a few of the individual URLs into a QR code and have my students scan them and guess what language it is. My first problem was using Chrome. I didn’t realize Chrome does not play WAV files. I shot out a question to my Twitter PLN wondering if it was just me, or if the site was down. I got 3 responses right away. That led me to find out that it was my browser, so I went to FIrefox. 

Now, I’m cooking! I set up the link in my QR code generator and no luck! My iPod Touch doesn’t read WAV files! Argh! I had 2 new responses from my Twitter PLN with new suggestions. I was beginning to get a headache. This fun idea was turning into a lot of work. I came home and talked with DS #1. “Oh, it’s easy!” he said. He then led me through the steps to make this work. Here is what we did. 

• On the URL of the WAV file I wanted to use, I went to FILE, SAVE PAGE AS
• I plopped that into Audacity
• I exported that as an MP3
• I uploaded it to my public file in Dropbox
• Then copied the public link
• Used that link to make a QR code in a QR code generator
• Copied and pasted it into a drawing program
• Print out, place around the room
• Students use a QR code reader to listen to the greetings
• Students mark which languages they believe the greeting is spoken

So, thanks to 5 virtual friends from around the world and one real life son, I have my techy-geeky Easter bulletin board!