One of my mantras is 'if you cannot find it within 3 clicks then it's poorly designed'. I was in the Secondary Art area on Friday visiting a colleague and noticed the clock near the reflection pool was not working. Many times in the Student Council meetings I hear our students lament, and rightly so, about our school clocks being wrong or simply not working. It got me thinking about how members of our community could easily report an issue with a clock, on the spot, within 3 clicks. After a quick five minute Google search I think I may have the answer. If each clock was numbered and its location documented then we could use a unique QR code to send an email directly to Buildings and Grounds (B&G) to come and fix it, or set it to the correct time. It works like this:
1) launch your QR reader app (or if you have an iPhone then simply launch the camera app) and point it at the QR code posted under the clock
2) this bounces you to a unique url for that clock. The url opens your mail app with the email address, subject, and instructions in the body of the email pre-populated
3) you press send and an email goes to B&G so that they can respond.
Here is the website you can use to create a custom QR code to do this: www.qrcode-monkey.com/#email
There are many QR generating websites out there, as well as QR reader apps.
Try pointing your phone at the QR code below to see if it works.
Next step is to try to convince B&G that this may work!
The other mantra that this links to is the 'many to one' philosophy. In other words, if you get many people working on the same problem then it can get fixed more efficiently. It just needs to be simple to report.