Guides to using barcode scanners in the Writing Cafe (Via S4 student system)

Created some new guides to using scanners in the Writing Cafe, so the Writing Mentors would know how to keep them charged, general care and how to use them appropriately. It is also helping us to understand how the cafe was being used by our students. We have been finding over the years that students are quite happy to produce their campus cards for scanning, especially if it helps us prove how popular the Writing cafe is as a resource for our students writing development!

S3 Student System and Writing Cafe attendance monitoring

Had some great conversations with Dr Paul Dowland (creator of the S3 system we use at Plymouth for student module/programme and teaching logging). I wanted to see how I could utilise barcode scanning of campus cards as a means to monitor access to the Writing Cafe and also potentially use it for Learning Development Tutorials and teaching sessions.  The use of the barcode scanners mean that no student data is collected, other than number and date. Keeping things quick easy safe and secure.  This will help Learning Development to establish how much the Cafe and related learning devleopment tutorials are impacting on student learning in the long run, as well as widening participation. This should also completely cut back on administration and improve working efficiencies -  Exciting times!

Barcode Creation

Thought I would share a useful find, something I had been testing for potential TEL projects.  Its a handy bar code creator on TEC-IT website. Allows users to create specific barcodes with any alpha numerical text! Its free for non-commercial use..., hence the logo below, thank you TEC-IT ;)

Barcode Software

Yes this one also says 'Hello World!'.

Try Barcode Scanner on the Android to test it out, works a treat!