Digital Escape Rooms
Why a Digital Escape Room?
Escape rooms seem to be popping up everywhere and they have definitely found a place in schools as well, for good reason. Escape rooms are ways for groups to work together and problem solve, trying to solve riddles, clues, and problems to help them escape a task or situation. They are a unique way to provide an assessment for your students that allows for higher engagement and excitement! Sounds exactly what learning should be. Physical Escape Rooms are phenomenal and provide students with an amazing experience, but they do take a lot of time and effort to set up. So Digital Escape Rooms can come in to play when you need something a little more simple. They can be set up using technology and can be a lot more cost effective. Students enjoy them and are learning at the same time!
Creating a Password in Google Forms
This is a great video that goes over the process of creating "passwords" for your questions, as well as demonstrating how to make new sections for each question (not just a new question)
Advanced Settings in Google Forms
If This, Then That: This is a way for you to provide differentiated instruction for your students based on their answers. You can send them to a question, based on their answer! How cool is that!
Conditional Formatting:
This is the how you create the colored squares like I did in Google Sheets, and then made it tie into the escape room. There are several tutorials on this, so if this doesn't help you, search YouTube
Resources
YouTube tutorials are awesome for this type of thing. Whether you want a simple or more in-depth digital escape, or want to learn how to insert certain components.
Teachers Pay Teachers: There are already created Digital Escape Rooms that you can purchase
BreakoutEDU: They have digital formats for escape rooms, so if you have a subscription, or know someone who does, this is a great resource!
Challenge
Create a Digital Escape Room for your students. If this intimidates you, then start small. Find a work sheet that you would normally have your students do and turn it into the Escape Room. The questions can be multiple choice, or just have one answer. Start with just a few questions on your first one! It can be spelling words, vocabulary clues...anything!
If you are comfortable with the basic format, then push your limits....there are so many cool things you can do in this realm. Include puzzle pictures, secret codes, links to websites, videos, or hidden clues. Seriously the sky is the limit. Always test it before having your students attempt it....I almost always find something I need to fix on my end.