Escape the Classroom
I have become enthralled with Breakouts from BreakoutEDU and have so many ideas for creating some of my own. I love puzzles and the idea of gamification of the classroom. Students love games and creating games for learning allows them to learn without knowing they are learning. It makes school fun. However, the skills students gain from participating in gamed based lessons are not fully measurable. How do you measure critical thinking, creativity or cooperation skills? There is no data per se to collect. You can't compare testing scores for creativity. Math skills are finite. Creativity and critical thinking that always seems so subjective. An assessment of an individual’s critical thinking skills must challenge them to demonstrate all of these skills over a range of difficult problem situations that is calibrated to match the level of their decision responsibility.
Breakouts/Escape Rooms make education more problem-based, more social, more interactive and more physical. They can be adapted for any discipline. There were over 700 open source breakout games available and more being developed by educators each day. However, BreakoutEDU team just announced a new platform with a subscription option. There are hands on games as well as digital games available. It was only a matter of time before this was monetized. They have allowed the old games to still be freely available with a free account, but any of the new games will need to be purchased. I no longer feel guilty my new game to my Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) account! While I love the BreakoutEDU team and the resources they have developed, I personally will always support the individual teacher or developer other a company of corporation so TpT.
The one discipline I find lacks quality lessons and activities is my favorite, earth science. There is really just only one breakout. They have several new games but they are mostly weather and natural disaster related not geology.
I have found a few others on TpT but still lacking in quantity and quality. So, this is the perfect opportunity for me to weild my wand and create a bunch!
I find I struggle to stay focused on developing just one resource. I tend to develop several resources all at the same time, which on the surface makes it seem like I never accomplish anything, but I am constantly developing and revising until I have a cohesive product to present. This is an important part of my own personal development process as well as my engineering process.
I compiled many resources to begin making my breakouts in this Symbaloo webmix. I included resources for creating clues, puzzle boxes and links to puzzles.