1. Arrange students into groups. Each group needs at least ONE person who has a mobile device.
2. If their phone camera doesn't automatically detect and decode QR codes, ask students to
4. Cut them out and place them around your class / school.
1. Give each group a clipboard and a piece of paper so they can write down the decoded questions and their answers to them.
2. Explain to the students that the codes are hidden around the school. Each team will get ONE point for each question they correctly decode and copy down onto their sheet, and a further TWO points if they can then provide the correct answer and write this down underneath the question.
3. Away they go! The winner is the first team to return with the most correct answers in the time available. This could be within a lesson, or during a lunchbreak, or even over several days!
4. A detailed case study in how to set up a successful QR Scavenger Hunt using this tool can be found here.
Question | Answer |
| 1. This boy genius worked for British intelligence as a codebreaker in World War II. His success in breaking Germany’s Enigma code system shortened the war by an estimated 2 years and saved 14 million lives. However, his legacy was destroyed and his security clearance revoked when he was prosecuted in 1952 for being gay. In 2009, many years after his death, over 30,000 people signed a petition to secure an official government apology for his prosecution. The success of this effort eventually led to his pardon in 2013, then in 2017, to the offical pardons of all 17,000 other citizens who had been prosecuted in England and Wales in the 1950s and 60s for being gay. | Alan Turing | 2. This pioneer of computer science developed the first non-binary English-based coding language in 1959. She spent the rest of her career standardizing the Navy to the COBOL language. Most Naval officers are forced to retire at 60, but she remained in the Navy with special Congressional permission until she retired at age 79 at the rank of rear admiral. With all her accomplishments, she is most famous for coining the term “debug” in 1947 and for her popular demonstrations of how fast information can travel via optical fiber. | Grace Hopper | 3. Born in 1791 in London, this engineer invented computers before electricity was available, but he never actually built one. The first computer of his design, which he called a “difference engine,” was built in 2002, 153 years after its design. The only change from his original design is that it works by hand crank instead of steam. His finally-realized difference engine is currently on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. After his death, his brain was also put on display: half of it at the Science Museum, London and the other half at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum. | Charles Babbage | 4. This countess was a brilliant mathematician, pushed into the mostly male field of mathematics by her mother, who was afraid if her daughter became interested in literature, she would follow in the footsteps of her equally brilliant but morally questionable father, the poet Lord Byron. When she was a teenager, she began a decades-long correspondence with the inventor of the difference engine, who nicknamed her the “Enchantress of Numbers.” Throughout this time, she kept an elaborate collection of notes on his invention. Those notes are now regarded as the first computer program. | Ada Lovelace | 5. This German mathematician and philosopher’s writings about logical reasoning form the basis for if-else statements and conditional branching in computer programs. Based on his identity/contradiction principle, he invented the binary system in which everything comes down to one of only two choices: 0 or 1. | Gottfried Leibniz | 6. This computer, designed to calculate ballistic trajectories, was completed in 1945. It was so large that it was mistaken for a room full of refrigerators when photographs of it were leaked. Its programmers were six female mathematicians, drawn from a pool of about 200 computational analysts (one of few technical job categories open to women at the time). These women are now regarded as the first programmers of an electronic computer. However, because the project was classified, the computer and its programmers remained unknown until 1996. | ENIAC | 7. This computer, built during World War II, was programmed by computing history superstars Richard Bloch, Robert Campbell, and Grace Hopper. A small technical team, mostly scientists from IBM, were drafted into the Navy for the purpose of operating this computer, although they did not know the classified purpose of their work. The computer took 24 channels of tape as input divided into three fields: input data, operation, and output storage location. The most important project this computer was used for was the Manhattan Project. The computer was disassembled in 1959, but parts of it remain on display at Harvard, IBM, and the Smithsonian. | Harvard Mark I | 8. This 8-bit home computer was the first to be sold to the general public at regular retail stores instead of specialized electronics stores. To date, it is still the most popular home computer ever made, with 17 million sold between 1983 and 1986. Many middle-aged gamers played their first computer games on this model; by 1985, 70% of the cartridges sold for the machine were games. The machine had 64.5 KB of RAM; a variety of ports for attachments like joysticks, modems, printers, and keyboards; a built-in RF modulator that could plug into any TV; and a dedicated cartridge port for software cartridges. | Commodore 64 | 9. This device, the earliest analog computer discovered so far, was found in a shipwreck in 1901 off the coast of a Greek island. The device has been dated to approximately 85 BC. It is a clockwork style mechanism of 37 gear wheels and could be used to track the stars, moon phases, and eclipses. It was probably one of only a few in existence, as the technology of astronomical clockwork was lost after this time period and was not re-invented until the 1300s. The fragments of it that remain are on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. | Antikythera mechanism | 10. The first device of this type was released in 2007. Its release revolutionized many aspects of communication and, some would say, of society. These devices sport a vast range of input/output options. One current top-line device contains nine sensors, three microphones, four speakers, three cameras, a touch screen, Bluetooth support, and a dock adaptor. It can also be paired with a variety of external devices, including wearable tech and even vehicles. Physicist Michio Kaku famously said, “Today, [this device] has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon.” | smartphone | 11. This was the first English-based high-level computer language, created in 1959 by a US Department of Defense team headed by Grace Hopper. After it was developed, the government forced all computer manufacturers to use it for data processing, thereby ensuring that all computers process data similarly. The original version of this language accepted only strings and numerical data types, which was still a vast improvement over binary-only systems. The language is still used, but only for upkeep on older devices that are still in service. | COBOL | 12. This software company was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Its first software program was designed to interpret the BASIC programming language for one particular model of computer. In 1985, it released its flagship suite of office software that quickly became the standard for home and business use and is still widely used today. | Microsoft | 13. This technology company’s main web address was registered on September 15, 1997. It is now the most commonly visited web address in the world, with over 63,000 hits per second on average. The site’s name is often used as a verb (“Just ___ it”) and an adjective (“We are a ___ school”). The company now offers educational services, email, online data storage solutions, Web hosting, and much more. | 14. These small software programs are downloadable onto many different kinds of devices. They enable the user to be productive, play games, or send messages. The first one was a game called Snake that was available on the Nokia 6110 in 1997. Now there are almost three million of them available for download. | apps | 15. Created in 1967, this language was the first object-oriented language. As its name implies, its function was to build simulations, which have very complex requirements. Programmers realized that some of the features of this language, like objects and classes, would be useful in any programming situation, and now object-oriented languages are the standard. | Simula |
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