MuseForJews

Escape!

Breakout or escape rooms provide an engaging way to integrate problem solving into your classroom. Basically, it’s a game where players use hints and clues to solve puzzles, which lead them to more hints to solve more puzzles. The payoff is “escaping” the room or breaking into a locked box.

There are commercial escape rooms popping up all over, and this has not gone unnoticed by educators who seek to leverage the craze and use it as an engaging activity for their students.

If you’re interested in purchasing a breakout box to use in your classroom, check out BreakoutEDU. You can buy their ready-to-go lock box with programmable locks, a lockout hasp, and  hundreds of ready-to-use puzzles and downloadables. It will also share with you cool ways that other educators are using the product.
BreakoutEDU’s product comes at a steep price, though. If you’re interested in creating your own Breakout box, this post has some great tips and list of the supplies you’ll need to purchase (hint: if you search for “breakout game” on Amazon, you’ll get a bunch of results that include locks, a lockout hasp, and locking storage boxes). You may even have some of these products already.

Any breakout game has the same premise: start with a story of some kind that poses a challenge. A typical breakout narrative includes a dilemma (someone or something is missing, or has been captured) and the directive that the students will need to solve clues to open the box and save the day. BreakoutEDU has resources for organizing your story on their site, including an organizer template.

Technology can be easily integrated in a breakout game, including QR codes (solve a clue, get a QR code to scan and get another clue) and Google forms.

For more information about creating your own breakout, you can view these videos:
Introducing Breakout EDU, Elementary Breakout; and read this  article.

In Your Classroom

• Hanukkah is coming, and an Escape room can fit the Hanukkah story perfectly. Create a room where students have to find the pure oil, so that they can light the menorah!
• This is a sure-fire way to engage your students in an end-of-unit activity that is going to be way more fun than anything else.
• Breakout games can be a terrific ice breaker– and not just for kids! How about a breakout faculty meeting? Or a way to introduce new families to one another?
• Ask older students to creating a breakout game for younger students. It can be a terrific way for everyone involved to review content that they’ve already mastered.

This is a “Technology Tuesday” post via Behrman House, edited by Ann D. Koffsky . You can find more Behrman House Technology Tuesdays here.

November 21, 2017 - Posted by Tktchr | Behrman House Technology Tuesday, Uncategorized | breakout, breakout edu, educational technology, escape rooms