QR Codes for Marketing and Communication in Student Council

One powerful marketing concept is to tap into human curiosity. For example, the QR code with text “Check it Out!” captures the attention of students in the hallways. Assuming you’re in a school that allows cell phones in hallways, a students whips out their phone and scans the QR code. It tells them about an upcoming dance. But, here’s the difference - now that information is in their phone!

You can create your own QR code that contains text at a site like http://qrcode.kaywa.com and you can include up to 256 characters of text. Since most phones can scan QR codes and most students always have their phones, using QR codes is a quick and efficient way to transfer information about events and have that information retained in the phone.

QR codes can also store URLs so that when students scan them, their phone takes them to that website. But, you can go a step further. Using Google’s URL shortener ( http://goo.gl/ ) you can not only turn long URLs into short, easy to share URLs but also generate a QR code for that short URL. There’s another aspect to using this tool that is potentially useful: statistics. When you create short URLs and QR codes in Google while logged in to your Google account, there are statistics maintained for you on how many people visit the linked website. You can monitor traffic to your website and make decisions about which resources are most useful.

To create QR codes using Google, follow these directions:

1. Login to your Google account (if you want to track visitors to you website)
2. Go to http://goo.gl/ and enter the URL for the website and click “shorten”
3. Copy the shorten URL (it will look something like this: http://goo.gl/QPtho )
4. Past that shorten URL into a new browser window and add .qr to the end (http://goo.gl/QPtho.qr )
5. Load that page and the QR code is an image that you can save or copy-paste

Now, whenever you’re logged in to your Google account and you visit http://goo.gl/ you’ll see a list of any URLs that you have shortened. Click on “details” for any of the links to see the statistics for the number of people who have followed your shortened link. Statics are recorded whether visitors clicked on the shortened link from a webpage, tweet, or Facebook or if they followed the link using the QR code.

Oppose PA House Bill 855

Franklin Roosevelt said, "We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future." This captures so much of what we hope to do as teachers and yet simultaneously absolved us of venturing into matters beyond the classroom. The great lesson of history is that groups endure the most severe injustices when good people fail to rise up or speak out.

PA House Bill 855 is not directly about reducing deficit/debt. This is about power. About taking power from workers, from the people, and placing it even more staunchly in the hands of politicians and corporations. This is not an assault on teacher unions - this is an assault on labor, on the workers who built this country, on the middle-class. It is part of a larger effort to reduce the expectations all Americans have for pensions, health care, and security.

Without seniority, a school that is trying to resolve financial issues could furlough one experienced teacher for every two novice teachers and save nearly equally in financial terms. In turn, schools are able to preserve moderate class sizes and programs which reduces resistance from parents. Governors and lawmakers argue that schools need to be able to adopt business-like policies to be more fiscally responsible. If we believe that assertion, then furloughing experienced teachers - regardless of their effectiveness, is the most cost effective solution with minimal impact on other metrics like class size and program availability. Furloughing any teacher is devastating, but without the security of seniority, experienced teachers will be the first to go and with them goes wisdom, influence, and stability.

We cannot guarantee what the future is like for our youth - but if we don't take action, if we don't cry out in protest, we bear the responsibility for the loss of the future that generations before us have fought so hard to build. This is not just about the loss of your job. This is about the extraction of power from the hands of the people and the coalescing of power in the hands of a few.

We can no longer resign ourselves to only preparing our youth for the future; we must also insure that the future is not stolen from our youth.

Please take action against House Bill #855.

Google Voice: A New Approach to the Suggestion Box

Many student councils utilize suggestion boxes to collect feedback and ideas from the student body. The effectiveness of physical suggestion boxes, often located in libraries or other common areas, can vary greatly. One way to potentially increase the amount and timeliness of feedback collected by a “suggestion box” is to replace the physical box with Google Voice.

Google Voice is a powerful tool that blends phone and texting capabilities with voice transcription and message archiving.  Your student council could set up a Google Account and then set up Google Voice that will give your council its own telephone number. You have a lot of choice with this number so that you could potentially create a number that spells out some word or phrase that is easy to market and remember. Once the student body has the number, they can leave suggestions by calling or texting the number. Google Voice will transcribe the phone calls so that you can scan them quickly and keep a text archive along with text messages. You can collect student’s cell phone numbers via Google Voice and even attempt to provide direct responses to their suggestions while maintaining a level of anonymity.

You will want to check with your school’s administration to make sure they are agreeable with the idea of using Google Voice. Also, you will want to make sure that the Google Account that you use to set up Google Voice is a common account for student council rather than someone’s personal Google account.  For more information on Google Voice check out www.google.com/voice.