Breakouts are engaging learning games for people of all ages. Games (Breakouts) teach teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, and troubleshooting by presenting participants with challenges that ignite their natural drive to problem-solve. Speciality K-12 Breakouts can be used to teach core academic subjects including math, science, history, language arts and have embedded standards that apply problem solving strategies within a real world OR collaborative context.
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Sample Breakouts
Building Your Own
Tom's Digital Breakouts Free breakout games and templates for creating your own.
Create Your Own Breakout EDU Games Breakout EDU games for in-person and online classrooms. A couple of these games were actually designed, built, and shared by teachers and not by Breakout EDU staff. Breakout EDU offers an extensive collection of tutorials and materials for designing, building, and publishing your own games. Watching the game design tutorial videos is probably the best first step if you're interested in creating your own Breakout EDU games. Those six videos walk you through the overall concept of game design then the five steps of building and publishing your game. After watching the game design tutorial videos you'll be ready to build your first Breakout EDU game. All of the templates and artwork that you need to get started are available on this Breakout EDU resources page. The templates are in Google Docs format so that you can quickly copy and save them in your Google Workspace account. www,freetech4teachers.comYouTube video that explained how to use Google Forms for a digital breakout
🎯30+ digital escape rooms (plus a step by step guide for creating your own)
Room Escape Maker provides development tools and graphics
Creating a Simple Google Form Digital Breakout (Digital Escape Room) Using a Google Form you can create a Digital Escape Room that has your students solve problems, riddles, locate items etc and type their responses into your Form.
Genially Escape room Tutorial Simple to make with a sophisticated looking design
Escape Room Puzzle Ideas for the Science Classroom
Digital Escape Rooms Presentation with step by step resources
Building an App Breakout with Metaverse Room Escape Maker, that lets anybody create their own.escape the room games. It requires a little more of a learning curve than I would like, but I think it has some potential.
Resources For Creating Digital Breakouts: Ideas For Making Your Own Activities
Tools for Building Your Own Resources
You can find a video tutorial about how to create a Google site here, how to embed items from Google Drive into your Google Site here, and how to create a "locked" Google Form here.
More Expansive list of tools
Clue ideas from other "Digital Breakout" creators
Digital Breakout template website
A replicable Google Site template
Google Folder with template files. Makes copies of them and have at it. The website is a Digital Breakout itself. Go through it to see how they work. The site demonstrates some great tools for digital breakouts: Google Forms with Quiz Mode enabled for feedback, Quizlet, EdPuzzle, and Thinglink.
Digital Breakout Tutorial and Templates to Make Your Own $10.00 14 templates in 6 different colors plus a 21 minute instructional video. Everything you need to make your own digital breakouts for any topic and any grade level. I've even included a list of my favorite digital tools for making breakout puzzles.
Using Visuals
You can get creative with images and other visuals to give students a URL, clue, or code. Here's a few ways to do that:
1. Hide words in a mandala or a snote.
2. Select an image to turn into a puzzle using Jigsaw Planet or using Google Drawings (here's an example)
3. Link parts of an image in Google Drawings or using ThingLink
4. Have students look for something using the street view of Google Maps
Resources For Creating Digital Breakouts: Ideas For Making Your Own Activities
Screen casts designed to help you begin building your very own Breakout Digital site!
Create Your Own Breakout EDU Games Breakout EDU games for in-person and online classrooms. A couple of these games were actually designed, built, and shared by teachers and not by Breakout EDU staff. Breakout EDU offers an extensive collection of tutorials and materials for designing, building, and publishing your own games. Watching the game design tutorial videos is probably the best first step if you're interested in creating your own Breakout EDU games. Those six videos walk you through the overall concept of game design then the five steps of building and publishing your game. After watching the game design tutorial videos you'll be ready to build your first Breakout EDU game. All of the templates and artwork that you need to get started are available on this Breakout EDU resources page. The templates are in Google Docs format so that you can quickly copy and save them in your Google Workspace account. www,freetech4teachers.comYouTube video that explained how to use Google Forms for a digital breakout
🎯30+ digital escape rooms (plus a step by step guide for creating your own)
Room Escape Maker provides development tools and graphics
Creating a Simple Google Form Digital Breakout (Digital Escape Room) Using a Google Form you can create a Digital Escape Room that has your students solve problems, riddles, locate items etc and type their responses into your Form.
Genially Escape room Tutorial Simple to make with a sophisticated looking design
Escape Room Puzzle Ideas for the Science Classroom
Digital Escape Rooms Presentation with step by step resources
- Make Your Locks Form
- Create Your Clues
- Make a Google Site
- Making Clues - slide 11 Numerous resources from riddles to rebuses
- Want to try the same escape sampler exercise Northampton CC's Beth Ritter-Guth used with attendees during her recent OLC Accelerate session on the use of escape rooms for online courses?
- Start here:https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1253580661436973059
- Enter your answers here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-0QQQrsXJnOgxXiio_ItE0Kb3rBSJYSP_MoTRCV6xygqFhA/viewform
Building an App Breakout with Metaverse Room Escape Maker, that lets anybody create their own.escape the room games. It requires a little more of a learning curve than I would like, but I think it has some potential.
Resources For Creating Digital Breakouts: Ideas For Making Your Own Activities
Tools for Building Your Own Resources
You can find a video tutorial about how to create a Google site here, how to embed items from Google Drive into your Google Site here, and how to create a "locked" Google Form here.
More Expansive list of tools
Clue ideas from other "Digital Breakout" creators
Digital Breakout template website
A replicable Google Site template
Google Folder with template files. Makes copies of them and have at it. The website is a Digital Breakout itself. Go through it to see how they work. The site demonstrates some great tools for digital breakouts: Google Forms with Quiz Mode enabled for feedback, Quizlet, EdPuzzle, and Thinglink.
Digital Breakout Tutorial and Templates to Make Your Own $10.00 14 templates in 6 different colors plus a 21 minute instructional video. Everything you need to make your own digital breakouts for any topic and any grade level. I've even included a list of my favorite digital tools for making breakout puzzles.
Using Visuals
You can get creative with images and other visuals to give students a URL, clue, or code. Here's a few ways to do that:
1. Hide words in a mandala or a snote.
2. Select an image to turn into a puzzle using Jigsaw Planet or using Google Drawings (here's an example)
3. Link parts of an image in Google Drawings or using ThingLink
4. Have students look for something using the street view of Google Maps
Resources For Creating Digital Breakouts: Ideas For Making Your Own Activities
Screen casts designed to help you begin building your very own Breakout Digital site!
- "Locked" Form
- Formatting A Google Site
- Embedding on Google Sites
- Hotspot on Google Draw
- Jigsaw Planet
- Force Copy a Google Doc/Sheet/Slides
- Bit.ly (link shortener)
- Thinfi (link shortener with password protection)
- White on White text
- FormMule
- Autocrat
- Google Sheets - Conditional Formatting
- Google Sheets - IF Formula
Grading
If you're wondering how to give credit to students' creations, instructor Ritter-Guth uses leaderboard points or coins for those who work through the activity, which means "it's in their best interest not to tell others," she explained.
For those course activities where the students are creating the escape experience, she doesn't grade them on their technical prowess but on the story that they've put together — including the grammar and logic that's used, as well as the story's relevancy. When students are building their own escape experiences, she gives 25 points "for doing it" and 75 points for the writing.
Some part of the grade is also based on input provided by the other students in the class, who "have to play the game and give feedback on whether it was fun, whether they were successful and whether the game was logical."
For those course activities where the students are creating the escape experience, she doesn't grade them on their technical prowess but on the story that they've put together — including the grammar and logic that's used, as well as the story's relevancy. When students are building their own escape experiences, she gives 25 points "for doing it" and 75 points for the writing.
Some part of the grade is also based on input provided by the other students in the class, who "have to play the game and give feedback on whether it was fun, whether they were successful and whether the game was logical."
Breakout Zoom Meetings
As an aside, Zoom offers a Breakout option for splitting a group into several small groups for discussion purposes. Watch this video tutorial.