Digital Breakout Game
I worked with a fantastic group of individuals to create a cross-curricular digital breakout game for 7th grade students (don't worry, it's linked below if you want to check it out)! To do this, we used a variety of different tools. One of the main tools we used was Google Forms. Google Forms is a very user-friendly, customizable way to keep all of your locks for your digital breakout organized. To keep all of the Forms together, we used Google Sites, which works very well with Forms. We were able to easily upload the Forms into our site to keep everything organized, and keep our story alive! We used various other tools to create fun and engaging locks, but one that I used was a jigsaw puzzle generator called Jigsaw Planet. This allowed me to upload a picture and choose the number of pieces I want, then it broke up the picture into a jigsaw puzzle that students can put together in order to reveal a clue! Overall, the Google resources are very organized and user-friendly, so if you are thinking of creating a digital breakout game, I would suggest using Google materials.
ISTE Standards and Danielson Domain
This hits some really good ISTE standards for students! Doing a digital breakout game helps students to become a good digital citizen, knowledge constructor, and computational thinker. Being a good digital citizen comes through navigating the various websites and resources used to create the digital breakout while staying on task and using technology appropriately. Being a knowledge constructor requires using various websites and resources to obtain and organize information that is important to the task at hand. Finally, being a computational thinker comes through figuring out the locks and clues necessary to complete the escape room.
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This fits very well into Domain 3 of the Danielson Framework for Teaching. Domain 3 relates to instruction, and one element of instruction is engaging students in learning. Our goal as teachers is to create assignments that will challenge our students while keeping them engaged in their learning. Digital breakout games are an excellent way to do this. The various clues and locks keep students excited while also giving them material that forces them to think creatively.
Digital Breakout in the Classroom
Digital breakout games should absolutely be used in the classroom! I would say it would be best to use these breakout games as a review of different concepts in a unit rather than as an instructional technique for new topics. These are meant to be an independent or small group activity, so using digital breakout games to solidify or review certain concepts could be incredibly useful. I would be cautious using them because while it is fun, these breakout games do not provide a ton of opportunities for actual student-teacher interaction where misconceptions can be corrected and questions answered. I find that students are able to get through one or two questions on various topics before the breakout games feel more like a quiz than a game. Overall, these tools are very good to use as a fun way to end a unit or to revisit concepts from previous lessons, but should not be utilized outside review.
