Well, it's that time! As we approach our final class this week, it's officially time to write my final blog post for this awesome class. While I learned so much over the past four months in our weekly Zoom classes, I have also really enjoyed having the opportunity to do some learning of my own - in the form of our Major Project. At the beginning of the semester, we were given a few choices for the route we wanted to take with our projects, and while initially I wasn't sure what I wanted to do specifically for the project, I did know that I wanted to complete something that would be useful to me as an educator. After some reflection, I ultimately decided on further exploring Breakout EDU's, specifically, learning how to create my own games that would highlight Ribble's Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship. In addition to using Ribble's work, I also wanted to align my breakout games with the PAA Digital Citizenship Online Course that is offered by my division. While this technically is an online course, I thought it would be beneficial to add a blended component through the addition of summative breakout games that could be utilized in a physical classroom setting. So...Where did I start? While I was certainly excited to begin creating my very own breakout game, I knew I had to do some research first. As a result, the first phase of this project was strictly research and I spent hours learning more about:
|
Puzzles This stage of development took the majority of my time as I needed to ensure that I was designing puzzles that would revolve around the areas of digital literacy that I outlined earlier, and also align with the overall story that I had chosen for this experience. Ultimately I decided that each lock would represent something the players would find in an enemy agent's apartment (computer, bulletin board, whiteboard, and notepad) and each would match up to one of the lock options that Breakout EDU supplied in the game creator. For example, with the directional lock players would find a computer monitor with the questions relating to the C.R.A.A.P. model in each of the four directions on the screen. In the accompanying text it indicates that "C.R.A.A.P. is the centre of being digitally literate", so if players start with the text and match up each of the descriptions (Timeliness of Information) to the questions on the monitor (When was the information published or posted?) in the proper order, it indicates a direction (LEFT). If each player identifies the five directions in the correct order the lock would be solved. |
As I mentioned earlier, this stage of the design process took the longest, but honestly, it was probably the most enjoyable. I not only had a blast designing the puzzles, but I also had to spend copious amounts of time to create each of the images for the puzzles (like the one you see above), which was equally as fun. To make this happen, I used a combination of Adobe Photoshop and free images from Pixabay.com to create the puzzles found for each lock. I haven't had much use for my Photoshopping skills lately, so this was a great experience to get some much-needed practice! Also, just like the previous breakout, I needed to get my ideas on paper first before I even touched a keyboard. If you want to get an in-depth look at how my (scattered) brain works, check out some of the brainstorming documents I created below.
The Final Product
For the first breakout, I needed to ensure all my resources were compiled where other educators would be able to access them easily. However, for a digital breakout, I didn't need to worry about this because everything is housed on the Breakout EDU website. This is both a positive and a negative, as it's certainly easier to facilitate the game with students simply go to a website to participate, but on the flip side, educators need to have a subscription to Breakout EDU in order to access it. While certain educators would be able to access the game, the vast majority would not - which doesn't fully meet the initial goal I set for this project. With this in mind, in the future, I would like to adapt this game into a more accessible game such as a Google Form Breakout or OneNote Breakout (thanks Curtis for the suggestion!).
Now onto the final result! Since the vast majority of you probably don't have access to a paid subscription to Breakout EDU, instead of providing a link to the game, I've taken screenshots of each puzzle for you to check out below.
Now onto the final result! Since the vast majority of you probably don't have access to a paid subscription to Breakout EDU, instead of providing a link to the game, I've taken screenshots of each puzzle for you to check out below.
Opening Screen
Lock #1
Lock #2
Lock #3
Lock #4
End Screen
Facilitation Guide
Just as I did with the last breakout, I felt it was important to create a facilitator guide that would help other educators if they wanted to use this game with their students. Since this is a digital breakout, there really isn't much planning or prep work necessary, so this guide essentially covers what each lock entails, and the explanation for solving so educators can help students if they get stuck.
As I highlighted in my updated plan for my Major Project, in addition to a physical breakout, I also wanted to explore the digital breakout option that Breakout EDU offers. As the name indicates, these breakout experiences are drastically different from the physical ones as they are designed (and played) on the Breakout EDU website or mobile app. While I would like to begin designing my next breakout experience right away, I feel that it's important to explore digital breakouts a little deeper before beginning.
How do I find a Digital Breakout?
Unsurprisingly, to use the digital breakout feature you still have to have access to a Breakout EDU account - which runs for about $100 for a year subscription. As I mentioned in my previous post, while this is certainly a steep cost, if you plan on using both the physical and digital breakouts regularly in your classroom, it may be worth the price. However, if you are looking to spend less money (or none at all), Breakout EDU also offers free digital games that have been submitted by users, which can be found by changing the search filter to "digital" and "user-submitted". Although, as this blog post solely focuses on the paid version, we will assume that you were walking down the street and magically found a $100 bill and had nothing better to spend it on than a subscription to Breakout EDU.
If you are only looking to facilitate preexisting games with your students, Breakout Edu's database provides access to over 800 different games that tie into various subjects and grade levels. At first glance, this seemed pretty awesome as there were tons of games that focused on the core subjects and I could easily see myself using with my students. However, when I did a quick search for anything related to Digital Citizenship, what was once a large pool of games, dried up into a puddle of three breakouts. For such an important aspect of education, it was quite surprising to see next to nothing in this subject area.
How do you play a Digital Breakout?
As an educator, before you assign the game for your students, you are taken to a page that provides you with everything you would need to facilitate the game. Since these games are played online, there is no set-up the only information on this page is the combination of the digital locks as well as a brief explanation of the game.
For the game itself, they begin with a title screen that includes the story/theme as well as the various digital locks that need to be solved to complete the game. These locks are very similar to the ones that are used in the physical breakouts as they can include any number of the following:
- Number Lock (1-5 digits)
- Colour Lock (1-5 colours)
- Word Lock (10 letters)
- Directional Lock (5 Directions)
- Shape Lock (5 Shapes)
When you click on one of the locks to solve, it takes you to a separate page with a prompt and a puzzle to solve. These puzzles range from text, images or videos which guide the players to a combination that matches the type of lock they are trying to solve. When players believe they have the correct combination for the lock, they are able to enter it at the bottom of the page and if they are correct they will be redirected to the home screen.
Designing Digital Breakouts
While my next post will most certainly cover the process I used to design a digital breakout, I thought it might be cool to explore a different feature that Breakout EDU offers: Student-Designed Breakouts. This feature wasn't something I was initially aware of, but the more I explored the "class" function, it seems pretty awesome. Essentially with a purchased subscription you also have the ability to create a "class" and provide each of your students with accounts that they can log in with the usernames that you create, or through their Google Classroom accounts. In addition, you not only have the ability to assign games for your students to play, but students also have the ability to create their own games. This adds an entirely new dynamic to using Breakout's in the classroom as instead of just having students apply their knowledge of a topic by playing a game, they now have the ability to extend it even further by creating games for their peers. As a teacher, this definitely excites me as it would be a really fun tool to use for students to demonstrate their understanding of class content.
Student Privacy?
With what I've learned from ECI 832 fresh in my mind, the first question that came to mind when I saw the student login page, was "what do the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy say?
Below are my key takeaways when it comes to student use:
Terms of Service & Privacy:
Below are my key takeaways when it comes to student use:
Terms of Service & Privacy:
- Anyone under the age of 18 must be under the supervision of a "teacher, school, school district, or educational institution."
- Student use may be subject to "additional policies and restrictions" imposed by the teacher or school that they must comply with.
- Breakout EDU may collect or have access to personal information of students, but agrees to keep it confidential and not share with third parties.
- Schools can choose to use "non-personally identifiable usernames" instead of full student names or can decide not to provide any Student Data at all.
-
Well, this sums up my research into the digital breakouts on Breakout EDU! Stay tuned for my next post, which will chronicle the process I used to create my very own digital breakout centred around digital citizenship. Thanks for reading!
While there aren't a ton of exciting things to do while stuck in my house, one positive was that I've been able to dedicate a lot of time to finish up my Major Project. In my last post, I explained the process I used to create a fully developed Breakout EDU game centred around Digital Security. While the majority of that post focused on the process I used for creation, as well as exploring the finished product, one thing I didn't spend a lot of time on was the educator side of the resource. During my research phases for Breakouts, I quickly realized that while some user-designed games might have had really interesting themes and topics, without clear facilitator resources, it would be almost impossible to use. With this in mind, I knew that if I wanted other educators to use this game, I needed to create detailed instructions and support documents that would help them facilitate the experience easily within their classrooms.
What Does This Look Like?
Before I began creating facilitator resources, I did some digging online and while there were a few different routes I could go, I ultimately followed the advice/templates that Breakout EDU requires to officially submit a game to their database. I decided on this route primarily because it appeared to be the most user-friendly, and also included access to lots of resources such as pre-existing templates and free images (see below) that I could use when creating my document.
As I created my facilitator resource, I tried to ensure that the explanation of gameplay was as easy to follow as possible and that the set-up instructions for the game were clear and would result in minimal reset time. Within the document itself, I focused on four main components that would be integral for facilitation:
Feel free to check out the completed overview below to see what the final product looks like. Please let me know if you think that there is anything I'm missing or anything you believe could be improved to make it more user-friendly for other educators!
- Set-Up Instructions
- Lock List with explanation for combinations
- Overview of Gameplay
- Reflection questions for students after completing the game.
Feel free to check out the completed overview below to see what the final product looks like. Please let me know if you think that there is anything I'm missing or anything you believe could be improved to make it more user-friendly for other educators!
But Wait, There's More!
One suggestion that Breakout EDU had when designing a game was to create a video tutorial to accompany a written document. They explained that these videos should explain the clues in-game as well as how participants will arrive at the various lock combinations. This resource is something that I felt was extremely important as I'm an audio/visual learner and having someone explain how a game works would be incredibly helpful for me (and hopefully others like me). For this video, I decided to create a PowerPoint presentation using some of the free images and templates that Breakout EDU offers. Once I completed the PowerPoint, I simply used the "Record Slide Show" function and recorded myself explaining the overview and set-up for the game. While I feel the video went pretty well, two things I'd like to improve on for future videos would be:
Below I've linked the video I created, once again feel free to check it out and let me know of anything you think I could improve on to make it more efficient for educators. Thanks!
- Improve the audio quality. As of right now, all I had at my fingertips was the mic on my computer, which provided mediocre sound quality. I'm thinking I will either try using headphones or borrowing an external mic for the next video.
- Limit the runtime to five minutes. While the length of this video is only nine minutes, I feel that it would be more effective if I could shorten it to around five minutes. If a video is too long, it's not going to be practical for educators to use as it will only increase the amount of prep time they have to put in.
Below I've linked the video I created, once again feel free to check it out and let me know of anything you think I could improve on to make it more efficient for educators. Thanks!
Here we are, the first day back from our winter break! While I may not have gone anywhere extravagant during our week off, I definitely accomplished a lot at home for my major project - and enjoyed working on it. Escape rooms are somewhat of a passion of mine, so having a week to sit back and fully committing time to designing my own game didn't really feel like work and was an oddly relaxing experience. This week definitely taught me many lessons for creating future games and has also really given shape to what my final project will fully look like.
So...What Exactly Did You Do?
As I described in previous posts, for my major project I wanted to create a series of Breakout EDU's that would connect directly to the Digital Citizenship Online Course that was designed by my school division. While the main focus of these Breakout's were centred around the online course, I realized after some exploration into the course itself, that each lesson in the unit focused on of each of Ribbles Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship. This provided me with the opportunity to not only create a Breakout that could be utilized by teachers within my own division, but really any educator who is using Ribbles work to teach digital citizenship.
With our last class still fresh in my mind I was decided to focus on the area of Digital Security for my first breakout. Before I could begin the puzzles for this game, I needed to further explore what content I wanted to include in my game. Because this game is meant to serve as a formative assessment tool to compliment lessons teachers are already teaching, I needed to ensure that I was very selective with what information I chose to highlight in my game. If I were to include too much information, it would not only increase game-play time, but would take away from the overall experience I wanted to achieve by creating this game. To help me decide on focus points for the game, I explored the Ministry Digital Citizenship Continuum - specifically on the section about Digital Security.
With our last class still fresh in my mind I was decided to focus on the area of Digital Security for my first breakout. Before I could begin the puzzles for this game, I needed to further explore what content I wanted to include in my game. Because this game is meant to serve as a formative assessment tool to compliment lessons teachers are already teaching, I needed to ensure that I was very selective with what information I chose to highlight in my game. If I were to include too much information, it would not only increase game-play time, but would take away from the overall experience I wanted to achieve by creating this game. To help me decide on focus points for the game, I explored the Ministry Digital Citizenship Continuum - specifically on the section about Digital Security.
Through the exploration of this document, I decided I would the three main aspects of Digital Security that I wanted to focus on in my game would be:
If you were to fully read the section for the Grades 6-9, you might notice that there was one aspect that I left out of my game: Sexting. As a Grade 8 teacher I completely understand how important it is to teach this aspect of safety to my students, but I'll admit I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of playing a game that addressed such a serious topic. I felt that this was something that needed to be addressed in the lesson itself, and could be addressed in a follow-up exit slip activity with the students.
- Protecting Yourself & Your Device
- Creating Effective Passwords
- Understanding the Importance of Terms of Service and Privacy Policies for Social Media Accounts
If you were to fully read the section for the Grades 6-9, you might notice that there was one aspect that I left out of my game: Sexting. As a Grade 8 teacher I completely understand how important it is to teach this aspect of safety to my students, but I'll admit I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of playing a game that addressed such a serious topic. I felt that this was something that needed to be addressed in the lesson itself, and could be addressed in a follow-up exit slip activity with the students.
Alright, You Got the Information...What About The Game?
Once I figured out what information I wanted to include in my game, I was officially ready to start thinking about the puzzles and flow of the game itself. I'll be honest, I definitely did not think this step would require as much time as it did! I was in no way prepared for the mental blocks that I would hit while trying to come up with engaging and creative puzzles for students to solve. However, after exploring the Breakout EDU database, I had found some new inspiration for puzzles and began to create my game using the "Backwards Design Method". Essentially I started at the end of my game (Opening the final lock box) and worked my way backwards to the beginning of the game. As I began to create some puzzles, I realized that I wouldn't be able to fully complete them until I decided on what type of locks I would be using for my game as the puzzles needed to provide the combination to a specific lock - and without knowing what type of lock each box would have, the puzzles would be irrelevant.
At this point, I hit the pause button on my puzzle development, and explored the different types of locks that are typically used in a breakout game and eventually decided on using five lock boxes with the following locks:
At this point, I hit the pause button on my puzzle development, and explored the different types of locks that are typically used in a breakout game and eventually decided on using five lock boxes with the following locks:
After deciding on these locks for my game, it became much easier to design the puzzles as I knew exactly what I needed the solutions to be. For example, for one of the three digit locks I obviously needed the puzzle to result in a three digit combination, so I created a word puzzle where students shaded in boxes on a grid that applied to "protecting yourself online". If students shaded in all the correct boxes, the grid would create three numbers that would ultimately be the combination for one of the locks. Just in case my explanation was sub-par, here is a visual of what students would see if they successfully completed this puzzle:
From this point, I continued to create four other puzzles, with each focusing on one of the aspects of Digital Security that I mentioned earlier. One thing I also needed to keep in mind as I was creating puzzles was how each puzzle and solution were going to link together. After all, a breakout or escape room game need to be more than just a room with a series of riddles and puzzles. It was at this time that I hit another mini-roadblock as I had completely ignored the first tip that I researched in my previous blog post: Create a Compelling Story.
How could I have been so naive to miss such a crucial step in the development of my game? It was obvious that all I had at this point were puzzle ideas, with no real reason for students to want to solve them. However, after some time I eventually settled upon a story that placed the students in the role of trainees for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, who were tasked with stopping the the evil group HACKER (I know..very creative right?), from exposing the digital personal information of millions of Canadians. Essentially throughout the game, students need to unlock each of the five lock boxes, which contain information about a "double agent" within their organization. Due to a self-destruct protocol, the students only have 45 minutes to unlock all the boxes and correctly identify a "double agent" within their organization before all the evidence is destroyed. While this theme may be a little farfetched, I eventually settled on it because it was easy to tie the idea of Secret Agents and the CSIS into Digital Security, and also...who doesn't love a good spy movie?!
So...once I had this theme nailed down, it was very easy to bring everything together into one game - and also helped me to change a few of my puzzles to better tie into the overall theme of the game. To get an even more in-depth idea of the planning process, here of some snapshots of my planning documents, as I am definitely someone who needs to plan things out on paper before I even touch a computer:
How could I have been so naive to miss such a crucial step in the development of my game? It was obvious that all I had at this point were puzzle ideas, with no real reason for students to want to solve them. However, after some time I eventually settled upon a story that placed the students in the role of trainees for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, who were tasked with stopping the the evil group HACKER (I know..very creative right?), from exposing the digital personal information of millions of Canadians. Essentially throughout the game, students need to unlock each of the five lock boxes, which contain information about a "double agent" within their organization. Due to a self-destruct protocol, the students only have 45 minutes to unlock all the boxes and correctly identify a "double agent" within their organization before all the evidence is destroyed. While this theme may be a little farfetched, I eventually settled on it because it was easy to tie the idea of Secret Agents and the CSIS into Digital Security, and also...who doesn't love a good spy movie?!
So...once I had this theme nailed down, it was very easy to bring everything together into one game - and also helped me to change a few of my puzzles to better tie into the overall theme of the game. To get an even more in-depth idea of the planning process, here of some snapshots of my planning documents, as I am definitely someone who needs to plan things out on paper before I even touch a computer:
The Final Product
Once I finished creating this Breakout, I had one final decision to make - where do I put it for people to access? In the end, I decided to utilize both Microsoft Office 365 as well as Google Drive. Microsoft Office 365 was my main choice for sharing with my division as this is the software that we are currently using and the breakout was partially tailored to link to their Digital Citizenship Online Course. I also decided to use Google Drive as many people outside my division have Google Accounts, and also using Google Drive is required if I decide to officially submit my game.
Feel free to check out and explore my game! Please feel free to use with your students and please give me any feedback you have as you explore it!
Also, just to make it easier here is bit.ly link that you can use to get to my game as well:
http://bit.ly/DigSecurityBreakout
Feel free to check out and explore my game! Please feel free to use with your students and please give me any feedback you have as you explore it!
Also, just to make it easier here is bit.ly link that you can use to get to my game as well:
http://bit.ly/DigSecurityBreakout
What did I learn?
As I reflect back on the creation of this breakout experience, there are a number of things that I've learned that will help me in the design of future breakouts for my Major Project. Overall, the creation of this game definitely took far longer than I had anticipated when I proposed this for my project. Between the researching, planning, creating and now reflecting stages, this single game took over 20 hours of my time, which was no where near what I had in mind at the beginning of this class. Below I've summarized some of my key learnings that will hopefully help me to create future breakouts more efficiently:
- Select a Story or Theme Ahead of Time. Even though I read about this while I was completing my Breakout research a few weeks ago, I got so excited about puzzle development stage and completely left this step on the bench. However, as I mentioned earlier, this caused a major snag in my planning, and I was forced to revisit this step so I could ensure that all my puzzles linked together and the solutions would have some sort of sort of significance and engagement for players.
- Decide on Digital Citizenship Content Earlier. Since the central focus of the breakouts is the Elements of Digital Citizenship, I need to spend more time during the research stage to pull out three or four important learnings that will be highlighted in the game. When creating this game, I didn't spend enough time with this, and as a result I had to go back and forth between the Ministry Digital Citizenship Continuum to find three or four important aspects for Digital Safety.
- Locks! Locks! Locks! Deciding what locks I will be using ahead of time is also very important as it's far easier to design a puzzle if I know what lock I'm using. Without deciding on the locks, the solutions for the puzzles becomes hard to create because certain types of puzzles will lend themselves better to certain types of locks. Ex. Three-Digit Locks.
- Creating a Breakout EDU is a Large Time Commitment (If Done Properly). This is probably the most important (and unfortunate) thing I learned from the process of creating this Breakout. If I want to create a solid experience that teachers are going to be able to, and want to use, it will take lots of time to get it right. If I try to rush any of the stages in development, the end result will most likely be less than desirable - which will be no good for anyone.
How Has This Affected the End Result of My Major Project?
As was mentioned above, this experience definitely took me far longer than I had initially planned when I had decided on this for my major project. While I've learned a lot that will certainly help me save some time in future breakouts, I no longer think it's realistic to create 4-5 fully developed games as this first project alone took me well over 20 hours of time between the researching, planning, creating, teacher development and reflecting stages. After more reflection, it also became apparent that not everyone will think like me, and I needed to created several resources that would enable teachers to easily understand the set-up and flow for my breakout game. This led me to the creation of several resources for teachers to use before facilitating the game with their students - which also took quite a bit of time. (Stay tuned for my next post, which will exclusively focus on this experience!)
With all this in mind, I've tried to be a little more realistic with my project and have adjusted my goals accordingly:
Thanks for reading! If you have any other suggestions for me, please let me know as any feedback would be valuable before I begin creating the second Breakout!
With all this in mind, I've tried to be a little more realistic with my project and have adjusted my goals accordingly:
- One Physical Breakout Experience.
- One Teacher Guide and Video to Accompany the Physical Experience.
- One Digital Breakout Experience.
- One Teacher Guide and Video to Accompany the Digital Experience
- If time permits, One Final Breakout Experience, Either Physical or Digital.
Thanks for reading! If you have any other suggestions for me, please let me know as any feedback would be valuable before I begin creating the second Breakout!
This past month has been quite an eye-opening experience for me as both a grad student as well as an educator. Going into this class I felt quite confident in my knowledge of both Educational Technology as well as Digital Citizenship. I'm routinely the "tech" guy or the "techy teacher" at each school I've been at, and I'm always happy to share (what I thought was a large) wealth of knowledge with other teachers. However, with each week of this class, I'm consistently finding myself humbled with what I thought I knew about digital citizenship. This week was particularly interesting as I've always felt that I've done a pretty good job at the beginning of each year (and throughout) teaching my students to be responsible digital citizens, but I've come to the realization, that I'm definitely guilty of not "practicing what I'm preaching." When we were exploring Ribble's Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship through wonderful presentations by Amanda, Catherine, Nataly, and Melinda, two points really stuck with me:
- Being a Digital Citizen vs. Digital Leader.
- Digital Safety & Security: Fully exploring Privacy Policies and Terms of Use for technology I have my students use.
When teaching my students to be good digital citizens, I had never really looked at it as only being the tip of the iceberg when it came to their digital presence online. However, as we discussed in class while teaching students to be good and responsible citizens is a good thing, it's typically encouraging them to take a passive role. As I now understand, as educators we can do so much more by empowering our students to become digital leaders and to take an active role in their online presence to inspire others. This is something that I certainly need to work on in my professional life as I would definitely describe myself as more passive online. I need to push myself a little more when it comes to things like Twitter, and rather than simply "liking" or "retweeting" - work to become more of a digital leader, rather than simply be a good digital citizen.
As for my second learning point, while we certainly discussed Digital Safety and Security in class, it wasn't until I responded to a poll by my fellow classmate Trevor Kerr, that I had my big epiphany in this area.
As for my second learning point, while we certainly discussed Digital Safety and Security in class, it wasn't until I responded to a poll by my fellow classmate Trevor Kerr, that I had my big epiphany in this area.
While the notion of reading the terms of service or privacy policies seems like an easy "yes", the more I thought about it, this is something I am 100% of not fully doing, both personally and professionally. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I just blindly introduce my students to new apps - I still do my own research into the apps before using them with my students, but oftentimes like Trevor, only browse the terms of use to check for age. As I mentioned in my reply, while I can sometimes get bogged down with the legal language of these documents, I need to do a better job of investigating the privacy policies and terms of use - even just to get a better understanding of companies are using our data.
Great, but how does this relate to your Major Project?
As I mentioned in my first update post, my plan for my Major Project is to create a series of Breakout EDU's that focus around each of Ribble's Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship. While I haven't created a full Breakout yet, I've completed some research into how to properly design my own games. Before I officially began researching though, I realized there were a few things I needed to figure out. I first needed to decide if I wanted to create a digital game or physical experience around the classroom. After some contemplation, I opted for the physical experience as it's the one I'm the most familiar with and thought it would be a good starting point for this project. The second thing I needed to figure out was which element of digital citizenship I wanted to focus on. With my major learning this week revolving around privacy and safety, I felt the best place to start for this project would be Digital Security.
As I began my research, I came across a number of tips that most sites suggested I follow while creating a Breakout experience:
As I began my research, I came across a number of tips that most sites suggested I follow while creating a Breakout experience:
- Create a compelling story - This was something I'm currently struggling with as I'm not sure what theme or story would best fit surrounding the topic of Digital Security. My challenge is making sure I create an interesting story for my students but also making sure it's not downplaying the seriousness of the content.
- Include Clear Instructions - This one is incredibly important as I need to explain my game in a way that is going to be easy for others to understand. The only other time I've created a game, this was definitely something that I didn't do as I tried to lend it to a colleague to use and they had no idea what I was talking about! The Breakout EDU website offers a pretty slick template that I think I'll utilize for the duration of this project.
- Limit the Number of Printables - Essentially limiting the amount of preparation or reset time for games. Ensure that the majority of the puzzles can easily be reset, whether physical or digital.
- Create puzzles and Not Worksheets - With this, I can't get caught up in having my students read and solve puzzles on paper. I need to find a way to mix the digital citizenship aspect with creative puzzles around my classroom.
- Use an Online Folder to Curate all Game Assets - For this, I think I'm going to utilize Office 365 as this is something my division heavily promotes. Creating game folders will be a relatively easy way to compile all my content and make it easy for other educators in my division to access the games.
- Include Reflection Questions for Your Game - This was something I hadn't really thought of before, but something that I know understand is really important for my games. Adding in a reflection piece not only allows them to reflect on how they played the game but to take some time to focus on what the point of the game was and review the important concepts within it.
- Include a Tutorial Video - This is something that should be relatively easy. Most sources have recommended creating a short video (no longer than 5 minutes) that briefly walks teachers through the puzzle flow of my breakout game. For this, I'm thinking I'll use the app Explain Everything and simply upload the video youtube or post the video in the game folder in OneDrive.
- Not all Topics are Suitable for a Breakout - While I don't think this will apply to my project, I thought it was a pretty good reminder that not all classroom content is meant to be gamified. Examples being topics like slavery or the Holocaust.
While not a direct link to Breakout EDU, I also found this video to be quite helpful in planning a Breakout as many of the tips they provide can easily be applied to the Breakout model. On a side note, I wish I known some of these tips before I did my last escape room with my girlfriend. Definitely would have save us a lot of frustration and fights over the duration of that magical hour!
Now that I've completed some research into how to effectively create a game, next up is actually applying this knowledge and creating a game. My current goal over the break is to create one physical game around Digital Security and then begin to explore the Digital Game options that Breakout EDU has to offer and try to create a second game around a different element of digital citizenship. I'm excited to get started on this and will be sure to post an update next week with what I've created!
After some careful deliberation between the four options, I have decided to utilize the resource development opportunities alloted in Option One as the basis for my major project. More specifically, I would like to develop a series of Breakout EDU's that revolve around Ribble's Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship. What is a Breakout EDU you ask? Essentially a Breakout EDU is a physical or digital experience where students collaboratively work together to solve a series of problems and puzzles, with the ultimate goal of unlocking or "breaking into" a final box to complete the activity. These experiences typically have an overall theme and are alligned with a specific grade, subject or curriculum outcome. Breakout EDU's are very similar to Escape Rooms, as skills such as collaboration, problem solving and teamwork are heavily emphasized in gameplay, but differ in the fact that they can be utilized in any school or classroom and transportation to an actual escape room location is not necessary. While educators can certainly purchase a Breakout EDU kit from the website, these kits are often pricey and can just as easily be constructed from scratch for a fraction of the cost.
Why Breakout EDU?
As an educator, I've had some opportunities to incorporate Breakout EDU's into my teaching - primarily during the first week of school as a team-building activity, and also once as a culminating event for a Harry Potter novel study. I've found that whenever I've been able to utilize this resource, it has been a highly engaging experience for my students and I. The fact that when students participate in Breakouts, they demonstrate their learning in a fun way that also builds teamwork and problem-solving skills is also a huge bonus. While I have had some experience facilitating the Breakouts, I have very little experience in the actual creation of the activity, as the majority of the Breakouts I've utilized were created by other users in the Breakout EDU database. I'm very excited at the prospect of creating Breakouts for this project, as I believe it will be very interesting to learn about how these activities are structured and will also be a fun and engaging experience for me.
What Would This Look Like?
These Breakout EDU’s would be designed so they could be integrated into the Grade 7/8 Digital Citizenship Course that was created by my division and could be utilized by teachers using this resource. I would also ensure that these Breakout's are generic enough that they could be easily adapted for teachers who may in not be in my division, but are also following the Saskatchewan Digital Citizenship Continuum. I feel like this would be beneficial resource for teachers in my division as well as others outside the division as there are very few breakouts designed with a specific focus on digital citizenship. Currently my vision would be to create 5-6 experiences that would be available for other educators to access digitally through Google Drive or Office 365.
What Do I Need To Do?
As someone who tends to procrastinate (don't tell my principal!), I think it's important that I establish a few goals for myself for this project. This way I can check in with my progress and ensure that it is truly an ongoing project throughout the semester and not one that gets completed during the final week of classes.
As such, I've decided on the following goals for myself:
As such, I've decided on the following goals for myself:
- Explore the Ribbles Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship as well as Saskatchewan's Digital Citizenship Continuum.
- Explore the current Grade 7/8 Digital Citizenship course in my division and examine how and where these Breakouts could best be applied.
- Investigate numerous existing Breakouts and explore the proper template for creation so it can be easily utilized by others.
- Create 5-6 fully developed Breakout experiences targeted at the Grade 7/8 level.
- Further explore the Digitial Breakout option on Breakout EDU, and potentially design one of the experiences utilizing this program.
I'm really excited to begin exploring the creation side of Breakout EDU's as well as the exploration of the Digital Citizenship course provided by my division. If anyone has any other suggestions for me or has any experience in the creation of Breakout EDU's please let me know as I would appreciate any feedback or pointers! I'll be sure to update this blog with my discoveries and content as I develop the Breakouts - maybe I could even persuade some of you to be my guinea pigs and test them out for me!
Author
I'm a middle years teacher in Regina, Saskatchewan, working towards a Masters Degree in Education.
Archives
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020