Breakout EDU: An Educational Experience Worth Trying

For those that have had the pleasure of participating in a Breakout/Escape Room game in Sac or other cities around the United States, you know how exciting these experiences are. You and a group of strangers locked in a room with only clues and puzzles to help you breakout. For some, that seems like a nightmare. For others, especially the clever ones who love puzzles, well...this sounds downright exciting.

There are some brilliant innovators that took the idea and applied it to an educational experience a while back have been making their mark in education circles. Thus, Breakout Edu was born.

The concept remains the same, however, you don't lock students in a room.  Instead, you use a simple plastic or wooden box locked with a series of different types of locks. What you place inside the box is up to you. How the kids get the box open is the fun part. You as a teacher would leave a series of content-specific clues for them to analyze and as a class they would set to work getting that box open. However, they must understand....they only have a limited time. As these games are timed and if they don't get inside the box, well...they don't get to see what's inside.

Example of the wooden box option

Now, I've participated in one of these activities at a conference and I must say they are a lot of fun and very challenging. I was in a room full of educators and we were all working tirelessly to come up with solutions to the clues and puzzles. We used our expertise, critical thinking skills, communication skills, teamwork, and our phones. This game incorporates all of these things and more as it is a game that is best played with all members of a group working together. We bounced ideas off each other, debated the merits of ideas, deduced from what we already knew, we used our powers as web sleuths to identify information that may help us, and...we had a lot of fun!

We never did see what was inside the box. We ran out of time. But the experience getting there was exciting and all of us reported that we wanted more time to figure it all out (we had 1 more lock to go!!!!). This activity was engaging, fast paced, intellectually stimulating, and required no one sitting on the sidelines. It was an all hands on deck situation.

Since Breakout Edu started, they have been growing a following. You can purchase their products and classroom-ready games through them. Or you can design the box yourself and create a game on your own or visit the site where teachers have shared what they created.

If you want to go a no-cost route and harness the power of those Chromebooks kids have in their hands, you can create a Digital BreakoutEdu experience for your students. Same concept, no box, all digital tools. The link will take you to a series of links that show you how you can design your own digital box using Google Forms and how you can create a game for your students.

These games are great as an inquiry-based activity at the beginning or middle of a unit. It can be used as a formative assessment tool to find out what your students have learned. They could also be used for reviewing concepts covered in class before a test. The game is great for every subject and every concept. All it takes is a bit of work on the back end to develop the clues, set up the "box," and let your students roll with it.

I'll be hosting a Digital BreakoutEdu PD next month at BR & NU to demonstrate how I created the game. That is, of course, after all participants try to Breakout of my game....if you can. 😜