Classroom Digital Escape Rooms and the 21st Century Four C’s

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Teachers are always trying to find new and innovative ways to break the boredom of the same old classroom lessons. Over the last few years, classroom digital escape rooms have become one of the top collaborative activities that students love.
There are two types of classroom escape rooms, the Breakout EDU, which is hands-on, timed, and available for purchase. Digital escape rooms are done in pairs or groups and are delivered through technology and are a wonderful way to promote the 21st Century Four C’s – communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.
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Digital Escape Rooms
Why should teachers even consider using digital escape rooms in their classroom? Digital escape rooms involve almost no prep at all. There is nothing to print. It is all internet-based. Students can access the website that contains the escape room puzzles from any internet-ready device.
Digital Escape Room

There are four main benefits to using digital escape rooms. They are evident by using the 21st Century Four C’s:

Communication: Digital escape rooms allows for increased communication between students. They are working either in partners or groups of 3-4. They are working together to problem solve. Students need to be able to communicate their ideas and thoughts to one another in order to solve each puzzle.
students around computer collaborating
Collaboration: Solving these digital escape rooms when there are multiple students in a group requires students to be able to positively work together. Students form roles within the group. They learn how to work together towards a common goal, not against each other. They learn how to bounce ideas off one another, and not shut down other students thought.
students working on a digital escape room - click to buy the Tell Tale Heart Digital Escape
Critical Thinking: Digital escape rooms allow for higher order thinking when solving the puzzles. They encourage students to analyze, to organize, to evaluate and to implement strategies they have previously learned in order to solve the problems and clues.
Click to buy The Tell Tale Hart Digital Escape Room!
Creativity: This allows students to think outside the box to come up with possible methods to find a solution to the puzzles. The answers won’t just jump out at them- they will need to use a little creativity to problem solve.

These digital escape rooms can be used for almost any subject in your classroom, and at almost any grade level. Students become engaged and motivated when having to solve puzzles and clues. They are a fun alternative to the standard worksheet, research paper or assessment!

Digital Escape Room
I love small group activities where students truly work together and take an interest in the task. A digital escape room doesn’t require a “leader.” I believe this is the case due to the escape room presenting a central problem to solve. Each student in the group gives input as well as strengths that they can each share to “escape.”

Check out “The Tell Tale Heart” digital escape room here. 

Escape by the Morning! The Tell-Tale Heart Digital Escape Room
 
photo credits: thank you, Addie Williams,  for the digital escape room photos!  

6 Comments

  • Hi there,
    I really enjoy your content. I’m a fourth grade looking to create digital escape rooms. Our classroom has been chosen to pilot one to one devices and I would love to learn how you do this to work with our curriculum. Looking forward to hearing back from you!

    Reply
    • Wonderful! Good luck! You’ll love working alongside technology in your classroom. Thanks again!

      Reply
  • Will one digital escape room allow my whole class to work on this? Or do I need to purchase multiple copies so that all of my students have this in their chrome books?

    Reply
  • Hi Danielle, I just used your escape room for The Outsiders as a distance learning activity. It was fabulous. I loved that you incorporated rich content into each task. It was a great success.

    Reply
  • I love what you have explained about the 21st century skills. I am using an English digital escape room as a re-entry project the first week back from December break. I teach Spanish, so my plan is to have the students try to escape from the Holiday Escape Room and then have them create a Digital Escape Room on our content. Before that I want them to reflect on what makes a good clue, what skills and strategies did they use to figure out the puzzles. Do you have any type of rubric that would work for that type of reflection? Thanks so much, Carmen

    Reply

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I’m so glad you are here! My name is Danielle. I am passionate about helping teachers and homeschool parents promote critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication with their students. 

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