Virtual Escape Room team building tips

 

In a traditional Escape Room, your group is locked in a room and your goal is to find and solve clues, so you can escape before time is up. The idea of Virtual Escape Room Team Building may seem impossible – how can your team escape a room together if you’re not actually together in the same room? Well, it turns out it IS possible virtually…

Digital escape rooms also referred to as digital breakouts, are a great way to bring gameplay and problem solving to any lesson or unit. They can be an exciting and engaging activity for the whole class or as an option for early finishers. During distance learning, there are a lot of teachers that are looking for creative ways to liven up their instruction. So many have been using Google forms for collecting data, for surveys, and even for tests.  There is a way to use Google Forms in a fun and interactive way! It can be paired with video conferencing software to promote teamwork! 

A digital version of escape room combines a virtual “room” (often a Google site) filled with clues that must be figured out in order to unlock a form (usually a Google form). 

Check out these escape room examples to see how the concept works -

https://sites.google.com/view/techortreatescaperoom/home

Ditch that Textbook themed digital escape room

Hogwarts Digital Escape Room

Space Explorer Training- Digital Escape Room

Sample Escape Room Google Form

Answers for the Sample Escape Room:

#1: dozens

#2: your fingers

#3: 229, 13

#4: 24

To make your own Virtual Escape Room using Google Forms all you need to do is set response validation on every question in the form and display only one question at a time, check out the video below!

Please find attached a template for you (or even your students) to use to make a digital escape room!

1. Write your prompt

You need a good story to hook the audience. When you go to a physical escape room, they set up the situation with a story or information at the beginning. 

2. Create your clues

Determine how many and what kind (number, word, etc.) of clues you want. You can make the clues lead people to Google Slides, Docs, Jigsaw Planet, etc. or practically any other puzzle maker site. Keep all of these in a folder in my Google Drive so everything is together.

Below is a collection of tools and resources that can be used in the creation of your Breakout game. Take a look and see if some of these sites help spark some creative ideas for clues to use in your Breakout Game. 

https://www.breakoutedu.com/puzzleresources

https://www.breakoutedu.com/create

https://www.classtools.net/

https://wke.lt/w/s/Y27x8I

3. Create your image(s)

Have an interactive image created in Google Drawing. We plan to put all of this in a Google Site at the end, and you can easily import a Google Drawing and keep the “hotspots” active this way.

Once your image is created, you need to link your clues to each object. Let's say you have 5 clues, so you could link it to the window, broom, cat, book, cauldron, and one of the flasks. You can make anything you added to your image clickable as a link! To do that: First, click on the object you want to link (eg. the window), then click on the link button and paste the link to the clue. Continue this process until you link to all of your clues.

4. Create your locks

This step uses Google Forms. Create a new Google Form (preferably keep everything for each escape room in one folder). You want to use response validation (check out this video for a walkthrough on how to add it) so they have to type in the correct clue. You also want to make the question required.

Continue this process until you have all of your clues entered.

Include a special message or image once the person “escapes”. To do this, create a new section in your Google Form.

On this new page, you can post a message or an image congratulating them on escaping.

5. Create your Google site

Go to sites.google.com .  Google Sites is the perfect landing page for your Digital Breakout. It has flexibility and style while being simple to work with. Sites allow for easy embedding of Google Drive items as well as linking to any other website. Here's a video on how to use Google Sites 

Insert the Google Drawing using the insert from Drive button.

You can use the corners and drag your image to be as large as you want. Do the same for the Google Form. You can position them side-by-side, or with the form below the image. Use whatever works for you and the image(s) you have created.

When you are ready, hit the publish button. Don’t forget to go through the Escape Room yourself and make sure everything works as you want. You can click the link button at the top right on the toolbar and get a code that you can share; post that link in Google Classroom.

That’s it! Now you’re ready to get started creating your very own digital escape room. 

The premise is relatively simple: players must complete a series of tasks in order to gain passwords, retrieve clues, or gather other information needed to “escape the room”– digitally, physically, or both. The idea is extremely innovative: it works with any content area, particular skill or objective you’re teaching, and students are needless to say, extremely into it. After all, their “lives” are on the line!

Web source - https://ditchthattextbook.com/30-digital-escape-rooms-plus-tips-and-tools-for-creating-your-own/