 Hello and welcome to this week's Wednesday webinar. My name is Heidi Ruthmeyer. I am a staff developer at ESU 8 and today I'm going to introduce you to Breakout EDU, which is a great way to bring in gaming into your classroom. Also a great way to cover different or any really content area. And I think also more importantly some other skills that students really need including collaboration, teamwork and some creativity. So to introduce you to Breakout EDU, I'm just going to show the short little video clip from the website. Tired of students sitting in rows, bubbling in worksheets? Introducing Breakout EDU. Breakout EDU is a revolutionary new product that allows educators to bring gaming into the classroom in a meaningful way. Breakout EDU is great for getting learners out of their seats and moving around. Each game requires critical thinking, collaboration and creativity. Breakout EDU is great for learners of all ages including adults. Each game is centered around the Breakout EDU box and players have a set amount of time to open the box. During a game, players need to successfully navigate a series of mysteries and solve engaging problems. All games feature a blend of physical and online puzzles. Each breakout kit comes with a physical box and a series of locks and other items that can be used to play any of the Breakout EDU games. New games are being added to the store on a regular basis and there are many free games to get you started. Teachers and students can also use the online templates to design their own games. The Breakout EDU kit can be purchased directly from the website or can be assembled using the open source instructions. Learning has never been this much fun and the classroom will never be the same again. Every classroom needs a Breakout EDU kit. Let's reinvent education together. Breakout EDU. It's time for something different. Okay, so that was just a quick introduction to what Breakout EDU is about. Really it's just a game for the classroom where students have to work through some clues to break out of a box or find some more clues in a box to solve a problem. So why would you want to use Breakout EDU in your classroom? Well, all sorts of reasons, 10 listed here. First of all, it's a lot of fun and students I don't think even realize that they're learning as they go along. You can use it for any subject area and the website has lots of free games that have already been created by people in multiple areas. As I mentioned before, it's a great way to promote collaboration and team building, problem solving skills, critical thinking. It's also very important for the team members to communicate with each other and persevere. I like the opportunity for students to learn some grit. That's a word that we're hearing a lot more for students to persevere and get some grit and not just give up right away. They also have to infer. There's a timer that is on the website that you can put up on your screen so they have to work under pressure. And really it's all about the students. There is very little that the teacher does during the actual Breakout EDU. Now granted, there is some work up front that needs to be done, but really it's just up to the students. There's very little that you do throughout the actual lesson. And anytime we can do something that's a little more inquiry-based is always great fun for the students to try something a little different than a typical worksheet. So some tips for success. When you're talking to your students about doing a Breakout EDU, it's important that they understand that they need to work as a team. And you can break your classroom into multiple teams if you wish depending on the number of students that you have, or they can all work together. Also, they should realize the more they communicate and collaborate, the more successful they will be. And if they do solve a particular puzzle, as there is typically a series of puzzles, the rest of their team needs to be aware of that. So they need to check in with each other and make sure they know where everyone is at. And typically, you can give two hint cards to each team that they can use to ask for a hint. And really, that's really just your prerogative in terms of how many hint cards you give your students or what sort of hints that you do give them. So you do need to be very familiar with the game in order to offer them some hints. I'll take you to the website in a moment, but a lot of this information is already on there. For example, they do have a template for the hint cards that you can maybe just print out on card stock and laminate. And you can use those over and over for any breakout EDU game that you should use. They also offer a timer online, and their link is on there. And that would be great if you could put that up on your smart board or a big screen. So they can see that typically they're 45 minutes, so they can see the timer counting down and have to work under a little pressure. When the game is over or when the time for the class period is over, maybe they don't actually finish the game. I do think it's very important that you take some time to reflect and do some debriefing with your students about how the game went. So here are just some sample questions. You could certainly use these, a few of them or make your own particular questions. But I think it is important for the teams to reflect on the process. You know how well they work together, what would they have done differently. This can be just done verbally or they can do it as a group. Maybe you can make a Google form that the students could fill out. But I do think it is very important that you do some debriefing and talk about the actual process, the strengths and weaknesses of the game and your team. So always important to reflect and I think you learn a lot from those discussions. So here is the website address. And as I mentioned, I will go ahead and take you there and we will go through some of those games and I will show you some of the equipment and some resources that are available. One of the things I love about Breakout EDU is the journey often is more important than the destination. And I also think that learning needs to not be a spectator sport. We need to get the students up and moving and collaborating and having those conversations when they are working through the clues. So Breakout EDU is a great tool to do that. And this is just a fun photo showing some kids right after they've done a Breakout EDU. I like this guy right here. We broke out. Yeah, he is pumped up. So that's just really exciting to see kids. And look, they had 15 minutes left on the clock when they finished their breakout. So they may escape from their breakout. They may almost escape but run out of time. And I've heard more often than not that they don't quite get broke out from their project. Or it may be an epic fail. And I think that is okay. I think actually we need to give our students more opportunities to fail because we learn so much from many of those failures. It was Henry Ford that said that failure is just the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. Breakout EDU website also has the ability to create your own games and design your own games and post them. They do give you a template. But that would be something that I would certainly do after I've done several games and I'm familiar with them. And then I'm eager to make my own or even have your students make your own game. I'm told the Facebook community has some wonderful ideas. I think you can find a lot on Pinterest also for Breakout EDU. So I encourage you to check some of those out to look for more ideas. Okay, so now I'm going to take us to the website. And here's just BreakoutEDU.com. This video would just show you the one that I showed you already. So we're going to go to Get Started. Now you can either, for your step one, purchase a kit from Breakout EDU. And I believe they said it was $99. And it will show you all the equipment that you will get. Typically you get a box, all sorts of different locks, some special pens, and some other equipment. So you can certainly order theirs. However, they also give you an open source list that if you wanted to combine, maybe you have some things laying around at home already. Actually here they give you links that go straight to Amazon where you can find a lot of these. Typically you have a number lock, a word lock. This is a directional lock, which is really unique. This is a clasp that would go on one of your boxes here so that you could put actually several locks on here. So they may have to solve, let's say, three different puzzles. One puzzle that gives them a number code for this lock. Another puzzle that gives them a word. And another puzzle that gives them directions. Or maybe even another puzzle that they have to find a key. So you can use several different locks. Or you can use only a couple depending on the time, the age level, and what you're working with with your students. Here's where I mentioned that they give you a template for hint cards. So you can print those out, put them on card stock, laminate them if you wish. Here is a link to the digital timer. It just takes you to a YouTube video. And the facilitator presentation is the one I just showed you. So if this is something that you wanted to present to other teachers in your district, this is a great resource for you. Alright, so now that was your first step is getting a kit. I will say here at ESU8 we just purchased a kit. We're in the process of going through it and eventually it will be available for checkout. We have to go through a process to make sure that when people do check it out, we get them back with everything. All the locks cleared and those sorts of things. But right now if you would want one of us to come out and do a breakout EDU with one of your classes, we would be happy to do that. So that's your first step. Your second step would be to complete this form. It's the beta form. Really it just classifies you as like an administrator so that you would get an email that would give you a password so that you have access to all the rules and the setup and the answers to all the different games that are available. So I did this last week. I've only received one email from them with my code. So I don't want you to think you send that in and then you get bombarded with emails. I have not. I'm very good about just one email that gave me the code. So once you complete that, your next step then is to check out some of the breakout EDU games. So we're going to go to some of those. So here you can search for specific games. You can design your own games, but these are games that are already prepared for you. And there are all different grade levels, all different content areas. I see a lot for science and math. And of course I'm a science and math person. So I'm really excited about that. But if you go to each of these, it will give you all the information that you need to do a breakout EDU. And each of these would be able to use the kit that you would purchase. And you could certainly add things. You can modify it. But everything should be included in terms of how you would set it up and the equipment that you would need. And there are lots of them. Now if you scroll down, eventually you'll get to some that say they are in beta. Basically if they're in beta, that doesn't mean they are bad. It just means that no more than three people have actually played them and reviewed them. So they may be wonderful games, but just not enough people have responded in terms of reviewing them. So there may be some great ones on here. So certainly check those out also. So I'm going to go back up and we're going to just go into the spider heist. Now when you first click in here, it's going to ask for the code. I've already been on the website so it already has me logged in. So I have access to this. However, if it's your first time in, it's going to ask for that code that you will get once you fill out that beta form and then you will get the code through email. Okay, so this is going to give you all sorts of information about the particular game. I will show this or maybe just part of this video that sets the game up for the students. I won't play at all, but. Greetings fellow agents. I need your help. I am deep undercover investigating a criminal organization called spider. I have learned of a major theft that members of the organization carried out last night. Unfortunately, I cannot break cover to expose this theft. There is something much bigger going on at spider that I have not quite worked out yet. Okay, so that's just really, I won't play the whole thing, but there's about a minute and a half video that you would show the students to set the stage for them for the whole game. And this is a video overview given by the creator. It's about 11 minutes long, but it goes through step by step on how to set up this game, the equipment that you'll need, and she does just a fabulous job. So I'm really excited about getting into a classroom and doing this one with some students. She also then has just a step by step instructions written out in addition to the video. And then she has a, here at this link to digital resources. I'll go ahead and go to that. She has everything on Google Drive for all the information that you're going to need. I believe even including the video I think is on here. The video is down here. All the things that you're going to need for them to actually play this game are already on here. So all of this is already created for you. So I'm really excited about it and to have all this set up for you. So hopefully they're eliminating all the great deal of time that would be required to create your own game and to get started on one of these. Okay, then she also has a link to the timer that you've already seen and then a list of all the materials required. And she does mention that there are some steps that you could leave out depending on the grade level or the equipment that you have or maybe just the timeframe that you have. And then some additional materials. So that's just one example of the many that are already listed and already created for you on here. So I encourage you to try out a breakout EDU or give me a call or send me an email at hrethmeyer.org and I would be happy to talk to you about maybe coming out to one of your classes and doing a breakout EDU. If you have any questions, please let us know and thanks for listening.