QR Codes Provide Link to Kent's Past

Kent’s history can now be accessed with your smart phone.  

QR codes — bar code-like graphics — have been placed on 11 historical landmarks around Kent. Anyone with a smart phone and a QR app reader can scan one of the codes to watch a video about the landmark. The codes and videos are part of an initiative called the GeoHistorian Project.

The project was started five years ago by Thomas McNeal and Mark van’t Hooft from Kent State’s Research Center of Educational Technology.  The two researchers teamed up with two fifth-grade classes at in Kent to complete the project. McNeal enjoyed this unique opportunity to work with fifth-graders.

“It is always good working with the kids,” McNeal said. “They jump into it and create some suprising results.”

The students wasted no time in showing the results. With the end of the school year nearing, the students finished the project in five weeks.  

When the project began, students had to research the landmarks, write a script and create a visual story for the landmark. McNeal admits he was skeptical at first with how the project was going to turn out due to the lack of time.

“It came out much better than I thought," he said. "The kids and the teachers did a great job."

McNeal admits that this big of a project could not have been done without the help of the . Students used its collection of photos and the local historians to help accurately tell the story of Kent. Tom Hatch, Kent Historical Society administrator, was happy with the results of this project.

“I’m very impressed with what the fifth-graders were able to accomplish. It's historically accurate and fun to watch,” Hatch said.

Not only did this project give students the opportunity to use innovative technology in the classroom, but Hatch believes it also connected them to their hometown.

“Projects like this connect kids to their communities, and the more kids feel connected to their communities the better citizens they will be,” Hatch said.

McNeal and van’t Hooft will be presenting the GeoHistorian Project next week at the International Society for Technology in Education’s annual conference, which is the largest of its kind in the United States. 

McNeal hopes that the GeoHistorian Project can be something that teachers can easily integrate into their classrooms in the near future. McNeal wants every child who worked on this project to come away learning the same lesson.

“It was important because it shows kids that (a cellphone) is just not used for playing games, you can use it to learn with it,” McNeal said.

The second phase of the GeoHistorian Project will begin in the fall with two different classes.