Passive Programming: Teen Tech Week

I'm a big Teen Tech Week (TTW) person, so I had to celebrate this year, of course.  It would be our library's first TTW celebration, so I wanted to do something small.  I chose to go out on a bit of a limb and do another scavenger hunt.  This time, it was for QR Codes/TinyURLs in the teen area.  Teens were required to find 6 codes and then entered into a drawing to win a $25 gift certificate.  Scavenger hunt pieces looked like this:

I chose websites that were somehow related to the library like our OverDrive site (the link listed above) or our new Facebook page and made the links into TinyURLs with a free generator (I used tinyurl.com).  I then put the TinyUrl into a free QR Code generator, http://qrcode.kaywa.com/.  QR Codes could be scanned with a barcode scanner from a smartphone or iPod touch.

Participation was small, but I did use it as an opportunity to show several kids new technology.  One girl didn't know about QR Codes or barcode scanners and was excited to hear about them, especially when it came to books with them on them.  A boy didn't know we had eBooks to borrow online and stated that he was going to tell his friends all about it.  

So, even though participation was small, I still see it as a success, especially as several of my coworkers insist that this is not a technologically savvy area.