Escape rooms - or escape games are a relatively recent entertainment phenomenon that became popular globally in the early 2010s. Typically, an escape room is played by a small team of people who are ‘locked’ in a physical room and have to solve puzzles within the time limit in order to escape.
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| photo by greece-is.com |
The global increase in recreational escape rooms has inspired teachers around the world to implement escape rooms, physical or digital, in educational settings. There are a number of pedagogic reasons why playing educational escape games offers a valid and engaging approach to learning as it requires significant 21st century skills such as:
- Communication and collaboration: Escape rooms offer the opportunities for groups of students to work together to solve the puzzles.
- Problem-solving: Players are presented with a variety of puzzles/problems that they have to solve, gaining skills in developing approaches to solve them.
- Resilience: Players also develop resilience as they make multiple attempts to solve puzzles in different ways.
- Lateral thinking and creativity: Many of the problems and puzzles that players face in escape rooms require them to think differently and combine objects and ideas in novel ways.
- Time management is also promoted in a time-based challenge.
The next stage is to have students create their own escape room on a theme they have been working with. Creating escape rooms are true examples of project-based learning wherein students interact with and make meaning through varied textual, visual, and media literacy skills while embracing their multiple intelligences.
I have been contemplating the idea of creating a digital escape room for my students for a while now but I could not figure out how to organise it nor decide on a theme. A few days ago I came across two brilliant escape rooms about the 200 years since the Greek Revolution. You can access them here and here. Together with the recent news of the digitization of Louvre's entire collection I finally found the spark I needed.
"A Day at the Museum" escape room can be used as a standalone lesson or as a pre-reading activity for any text concerning Museums. It can be a great opportunity to introduce Αrt appreciation in the classroom or to celebrate International Museum Day in May.
So, go on! Step inside the Museum:
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| A Day at the Museum escape room |
and tell me what you think of it.
If you follow the instructions and gather all the necessary clues, I can give you the last part of the secret phrase to escape from the Museum ;-)
Feel free to add your own ideas on creating escape rooms and using them in the classroom in the comments.
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