Breakout EDU – What is it?

Click below to visit Breakout EDU’s website to see what it’s all about:

Breakout EDU is an immersive learning games platform that is creating fun new ways for students to be challenged and learn new information. Breakout EDU is helping change teaching around the world by making learning more interactive and hands-on to increase interest from students through gaming. The platform can be compared to an escape room because students have to work together to solve a series of puzzles in a certain amount of time, either with a physical breakout box or on a website online. Teachers have the ability to either choose from a list of pre-made games or they can choose to create their own game based around whatever lesson they are teaching. But what’s the best part about Breakout EDU? Breakout EDU activities can be used for any subject, AND they all include the 4 C’s I talked about in an earlier blog post!

Watch the video below to learn more about Breakout EDU and how it is transforming today’s classrooms!

Breakout EDU in ECI 201

In ECI 201 we worked with Breakout EDU to experience it for ourselves and see if it was a tool we might want to use in our future classroom. At first, I was skeptical about the idea of using gaming in the classroom because I was concerned that students would get too distracted on the game part and miss the learning part. I know whenever I would play games in elementary school I would want to skip through any of the parts that were educational (and honestly, they just got on my nerves) so that I could just focus on the fun parts of the game. However, something that I’ve learned about including games in the classroom is that it doesn’t have to be the one thing used to teach students a certain subject, it can be used as an introduction into a new unit or a review activity to help reinforce information from a certain subject. This can keep a good balance of making sure students learn the material, but also helping them have fun with it so it becomes meaningful and lasts in their long-term memory. Also, a lot of the learning benefits from gaming don’t come directly from the educational parts of the assignment, but from the “invisible learning” that occurs. This “invisible learning” is the underlying skills that are learned during a game when students are so focused on “winning” that they don’t even realize they are using their knowledge and skills. This is where the 4 C’s come in–but we’ll talk about that in a minute!

Below is a picture of my group completing the physical breakout box! Sadly I was not able to be there to help because I had a concussion, but I was able to do an online version at home!

The online version was very easy to navigate and just consisted of 4 different locks that you needed to solve before breaking out. Each of the locks had different things you could do. One lock needed a combination made of the symbols “up, down, left, and right” that could be found by answering the questions linked to a Google Form. Another asked for a word to be typed in response to a question, and another asked for a series of color combinations that went with a question that was given.

After completing the Breakout EDU assignment, I was interested to see how other teachers were using Breakout EDU in their classrooms, so I did some research.

One teacher at Walker Middle School developed a Breakout EDU game that went along with the book “The Hunger Games” for an English assignment. The teacher claimed that she loved starting off the year with a breakout box to show her students that her class was going to challenge them but be exciting at the same time, and I thought that was an awesome thing to do! Click the video below to see how the assignment played out:

So, how is this beneficial for students?

Breakout EDU incorporates all four of the 4 C’s: Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity into the lesson plan while also making it fun and enjoyable. The 4 C’s are necessary skills that need to be learned in order to be successful in life today, so being able to incorporate these four skills into a lesson plan is a tremendous success for teachers. The fact that students enjoy doing it too is just the icing on the cake. Like the teacher from Walker Middle School said, Breakout EDU can be a great way to introduce students to your classroom, and being able to hit on using the 4 C’s early on in the school year will be beneficial to the classroom dynamic moving forward. (i.e. students will be more comfortable communicating and collaborating with each other, they’ll be prepared to think critically in this class, and they will know that creativity is welcome and appreciated). Why would you NOT want to use this in your classroom?!

A refresher on the 4 C’s:

How does Breakout EDU incorporate the 4 C’s?

• Communication – When working in groups, students must share their thoughts and ideas about how to break out of the Breakout Box with each other in order to complete the task as quickly as possible. This requires the ability to express your own thoughts with others and actively listen when others are sharing theirs. Everyone’s perspectives and knowledge are necessary when doing a Breakout Box, so it involves a lot of communication to succeed.
• Collaboration – Like communication, collaboration is extremely important because working together as a team gives you access to everyone’s knowledge and not just one person’s. You can do much more with a group than you can alone! Combining each other’s strengths helps you get through a Breakout Box as quickly and efficiently as possible.
• Critical Thinking – Breakout Box requires critical thinking because you have to be able to problem solve, and the first solution you try might not always work. It’s important to be able to take a step back, analyze the situation, and logically come up with the best solution. If you do not succeed on the first try, re-evaluate what you did and try to fix it. This is critical thinking.
• Creativity – When trying to solve a puzzle like Breakout Box, you often have to think outside of the box (punny) to come up with the correct solution. The answers aren’t always straightforward with a puzzle, so you may have to try multiple approaches to find a solution. This means you have to be creative!

How would I use Breakout EDU in my future classroom?

After realizing that Breakout EDU could be a great way to incorporate the 4 C’s, I now have a new perspective on gaming in the classroom and would definitely want to use it in my future classroom! One way I would want to do this is by introducing Breakout EDU at the beginning of the year with an introductory assignment: “Breakout the Secrets of My Classroom”, where my students would have to go around to different breakout stations around the room and solve puzzles about my classroom. For example, I would have a task near my Reading Nook that asked questions about what all was available in that area, and then when students were answering questions to solve the Breakout Box they’d be learning about how they can use my Reading Nook and what all it has. I would include other tasks about other areas of my classroom too like in the Stress Relief Corner, the Cubbies, the Bathroom, and multiple others. This would be a great tool for getting students excited for my class with a game, but also teaching them classroom rules, policies, etc. I would want to use Breakout EDU for other lessons throughout the year, but my ultimate goal would be to have my students make their own Breakout EDU games as a project.

I included the link to an Art Teacher’s Blog who did something similar to what I would want to do,except mine would involve a Breakout Box!

More information about Breakout EDU

Below I’ve included two links for pre-made games by Breakout EDU!

I also found a really cool link to pre-made breakout box assignments that you can buy for low prices if you don’t want to create your own, so I’ve linked it below!:

*All images are embedded in the website or are my own

Recently in ECI 201 we learned about Project Based Learning (PBL) in the classroom and how technology has opened many doors for teachers to go beyond the traditional classroom design and accomplish amazing things with their students. Project Based Learning is a student-centered teaching technique where the students in the classroom choose a real-world issue that they want to research and explore so that they can have a stronger, more in-depth knowledge of the topic. My initial thought is that this style of teaching is AWESOME because it’s interactive, the students get a say in their learning so they’re going to be more interested in it, it’s relevant because it’s about a real-world issue, and the students will learn so many important real-life skills.

PBL in action: We read the article below and watched the video below on a fourth grade teacher whose students wanted to create a “Solar Powered Classroom” where their classroom would only be powered by solar panels.

The students wanted to tackle the real-world issue of the need for clean energy. They researched the different types of clean energy and decided that they wanted to focus on Solar Power because it was “the most clean form of energy”, and so they decided they wanted to build solar panels for their classroom. This is an expensive task — solar panel installation costs thousands of dollars and isn’t easy. Calculate how much it would cost you to install solar panels here:

This task would have been almost impossible for Mr. Sebens’s classroom to successfully complete, however, thanks to technology like Kickstarter, Mr. Sebens and his class were able to reach people around the world and raise enough money through donations to install solar panels. Also, access to computers and the internet gave the students the ability to research clean energy, learn more about solar panels, and figure out how to construct and install them. Thinking back to how the project began, internet and computers were also necessary for Mr. Sebens when he was researching to see if this was a project capable of being completed by his 4th Grade classroom.

Technology has helped made PBL projects much more affordable and feasible, so the possibilities for teachers are increasing tremendously!

What would I want to do for my future classroom?
I hope to eventually be working for a school that incorporates Project Based Learning into the classroom, and even if that’s not one of the core focuses of the school, I hope to incorporate it into my classroom anyway. I would want to let my kids help in the choosing of the topic; however, something I would love to do is a project that brings attention to the issue of homelessness and hunger and does something that benefits those who are homeless and/or going hungry in the local area.

I think it would be awesome to have my students create and manage a garden to help feed the homeless in our area. The project would include my students using computers and the internet to research statistics on homelessness in the country, in our state, and in our specific county, and compare them to other counties and even other states. I would also want them to research statistics on how many students in the school system experience homelessness. With this background information, I would then love for my students to be able to use Virtual Reality headsets and access a program (that would hopefully exist at this point–I’m dreaming here) where you could see through the eyes of a student experiencing homelessness and what each day after school is like for them. This would be a way of using technology that could help students have a deeper understanding of what it can be like to experience homelessness and develop empathy, yet at the same time not creating a divide or pity, as not to make any students who might be experiencing homelessness feel bad. Then, I would want my students to reflect on the experience and discuss how it made them feel with their classmates, and then brainstorm ways we could try to fix the issue of homelessness and hunger. I would want them to again research any solutions for homelessness that are working or have been proposed. If it became something my students would want to do, then we would start planning the garden and everything that goes with it to try and help the issue. If any help was needed with the cost, I would let my students help me research what the costs would be and then try to use a website like Kickstarter to fund raise for our garden.

This project would be beneficial to my students because it would help teach:

• Problem Solving Skills / Critical Thinking
• The importance of helping others
• How to reason through real-world issues
• Research Skills
• Note-Taking Skills
• Public Speaking Skills
• Classroom Discussion Skills
• Writing Skills
• Math Skills
• Social Studies Skills
• Science Skills
• Creativity, and many more!

*Images links are all embedded into the site

I know what you’re thinking — that sounds crazy right?! But it’s not. Virtual Reality has already been introduced into some classrooms and is expected to increase significantly within the next decade. The first Virtual Reality head-mounted display was invented in 1968 by Ivan Sutherland, but the headset had to be mounted to a ceiling and was used as more of a lab project than a product for the public. However, in the past couple years the technology has been made more accessible and more affordable. For example, we now have Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Google Cardboard– which only costs around $10. Below are image comparisons of Sutherland’s original VR headset to modern VR headsets.

Since VR is becoming more and more common in the school system, in ECI 201 we went to NC State’s Virtual Reality Studio in D.H. Hill Library to practice working with it and see how it could be used. NC State’s VR Studio includes eight work stations with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and other equipment that you can access as an NC State student, faculty member, or staff member.

When I found out we were going to be working with VR in ECI 201 I was extremely excited, because I had always wanted to try it and see what it’s like, but I’d never had the money or the resources to experience it. I was a little bit skeptical about how VR could be used for anything other than gaming, so I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect on the educational side of things, but nonetheless I was just excited to go play with it!

In D.H. Hill’s VR Studio we worked mostly with Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift and used the programs Google Tilt Brush, Google Earth VR, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, and a couple more.

My favorite part of the VR Studio was using Google Tilt Brush. I love to paint and draw, so getting to draw virtually, in 3D, and in 360 degrees was so much fun. There were so many different tools I got to use to create my masterpiece. It’s kind of hard to describe what it’s like drawing in 3D, so click below to watch a video on Google Tilt Brush:

After experiencing VR for ourselves and seeing what it would be like, we had multiple class discussions about ways VR is already being used in the classrooms and the benefits it has for education. Once I had used a VR headset, I realized that the possibilities for educational use are almost endless. VR headsets are beneficial to learning because they allow students to interact directly with virtual objects and the surrounding environment, it can be easier to visualize concepts, curiosity and interest in learning increases because VR is new, interesting, and involves the student in the learning, it makes learning feel more like play, and it can combine multiple aspects of different subjects into one activity. The VR program that I felt could have the most impact on the classroom is Google Earth VR.

Google Earth VR is an extremely useful tool because it allows you to “teleport” pretty much anywhere in the world, and your students can experience it as if they were actually there. This tool is especially useful for Social Studies classes because teachers could make a tour of historical places that are being studied. Lesson plans can stem off of the virtual tour, so as students go to different locations, the teacher can talk about each place and its significance. This use of VR is also helpful because while it is usually unfeasible to take an entire class on field trips around the world (or even just around the country) especially more than once a year or semester, taking a VR field trip is something that could happen more than once and at a much lower cost.

How would I specifically want to use Google Earth VR in my classroom?

I would want to create a Virtual Reality Field Trip to places around the world that had current real-world significance in the news, and tie it back into the original Social Studies curriculum that I was already teaching. For example, one field trip I would want to create if I was a teacher right now is a VR field trip to the Notre Dame Cathedral, since a large fire caused major destruction to it recently. To read more about what happened, click below, but my purpose for making this a Virtual Reality Field Trip is so that students could be immersed into the location in France and get to experience what it was like before the fire. I would want to explain the history of the Cathedral and its importance to France and to us. I would want to connect it to other major disasters or catastrophes throughout history to try and gauge more interest and importance from the students. I think this would be an awesome lesson plan because it would help keep students engaged in current events, but even more engaged than just hearing about them on the news.

*All images are embedded to the site or are my own

Digital Citizenship

The past couple weeks in ECI 201, we’ve been discussing Digital Citizenship and what it means, why it’s important, and how teachers can guide students to becoming good digital citizens. Digital Citizenship is the appropriate and responsible use of technology. This is becoming more and more important as technology is touching the lives of younger children and being brought into the classroom at younger ages. Children need to learn how to be good digital citizens to stay safe online, understand the wrong in cyber-bullying, manage their digital footprint, and many more things. A person’s digital footprint is the conglomeration of data based on the websites you visit, emails you send, and information you submit to online services that you leave behind as you search the web. Your digital footprint can say a lot about you.

What good digital citizens do <https://www.virtuallibrary.info/uploads/2/6/9/3/26930678/published/__6218195.png?1523065754>

As a class, we used a tool called trace my shadow that includes a series of questions about the technology you use, the ways you access the Internet, the type of mobile device you use, and Online Services to show how many “traces” you’re leaving. It also includes tips on how to limit the number of traces and how to be safe online.

My total traces on Trace My Shadow

This doesn’t mean that we should shy away from using technology in the classroom. As future educators, it’s important for us to teach students and their parents the importance of being safe and protected online, as well as choosing applications to use with students that aren’t going to improperly use their information. Avoiding technology as a protection strategy would only end up hurting the children, because understanding how to use technology and use it in a proper manner is a vital part of being a citizen in the 21st century. It can be tricky, but there are ways to use technology in the classroom that promote being a good Digital Citizen and still protect students online.

Twitter and PLNs 

For ECI 201, we had to create a professional Twitter account to start our Professional Learning Network (PLN). Your PLN is a great way to connect to other educators in your school, community, state, and around the world. Mr. Dayson Pasion (@MrDpasion) came to speak to our class about how he uses Twitter as a way to connect to students, parents, and other educators to strengthen his teaching and his online presence as an educator.

At first, I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of using Twitter for educational purposes, because it almost seemed “cheesy” to me, but once I started following other educators and seeing the benefits for myself, I became more interested and started playing with my profile and following more accounts. For example, when I learned that I was officially accepted into the College of Education to major in Elementary Education, I tweeted about how excited I was, and I received a lot of love and support from the College of Education, my fellow education students who follow me, and other teachers around the Raleigh area that I don’t know personally, just because I used #NCSUEducation and tagged @NCStateCED in my post!

“Social Media is not about collecting likes and followers. It’s about connecting to make a difference.”

– Krissy venosdale (@krissyvenosdale)

My professional twitter profile

Twitter Chats

After making our professional Twitter accounts, we were asked to participate in a Twitter chat, which is a group on Twitter you can find by a hashtag (#) and people respond to different questions and start discussions on different topics. The Twitter Chat I chose to participate in was on Tuesday, February 26th at 7pm called #2PencilChat, run by Sean Farnum (@MagicPantsJones). The chat discussed the importance of giving students feedback and what that looks like in the classroom. The questions asked were:

Q1: We all know feedback is important, but when is it important to make your feedback so strong to as to give someone an award?

Q2: It’s one thing to get an award or some special recognition, but something great happens when you receive it in a ceremony. Let’s talk about the power of that!

Q3: What are your protips for giving great recognition? Talk about everything from daily feedback to major awards.

Q4: It’s good for all of your students to be feeling the love, but how do we do that without watering down our awards?

Q5: You’re nominated for an award in your school or in your #PLN, what are you nominated for?

Below is a gallery of my responses to each question, and some of the responses I got from other educators!

It was very interesting to see everyone’s responses to each questions and to get to respond to the questions myself as well. Something I learned from the Twitter Chat is that not all teachers have the same practices or same views, but there are a lot of commonalities nonetheless. This Twitter Chat allowed me to observe the opinions of educators from across the country while sitting in the comfort of my own home. I feel like I was able to connect to these educators even though I didn’t know them personally, and some of them even followed my account! Everyone was very welcoming and friendly, and it was a nice way to gauge each educator’s “classroom vibe” just through their tweet responses. This is something I would definitely like to do again because I think that seeing other educators’ practices and mindsets will help me see things that work in a classroom and things that don’t, and will better prepare me for running my classroom someday.

My Future Classroom

Now that I’ve experienced using a Twitter Account as a PLN and participating in a Twitter account, I am better equipped with ways to use more technology in the classroom! I really enjoyed participating in the Twitter Chat, so this is something I could have my students do as well, depending on the grade that I teach. Since I’m an Elementary Education major, with Elementary-level students, I could have the students help me compile tweets on an account run by me. For example, the twitter page could be called “Ms. Kaitlyn’s Class Thoughts”, and we could sit down once a week and discuss a certain topic like “How to Be a Good Leader”, and my students could tell me their opinions and what they want me to tweet. What would be really awesome is if I could get other teachers at my school to do the same thing, so we could compare our classes’ thoughts and even respond to each other! I think this would be a fun way to get students acclimated to using social media accounts like Twitter in a positive way to help them understand Digital Citizenship, even at a young age. I think it would also help the students speak up and share their thoughts more. I’m very shy, but I’m a lot more comfortable sharing my thoughts online where I’m not face-to-face, so I feel like this could help shy students speak up and share their thoughts as well. Also, this would be a great way to build community if we could interact with other classrooms at our school, and even other classrooms around the world!

Connecting around the world <https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/social-media-community-worldwide-connection-concept-50764510.jpg>

Background

Hi again! I’m back, with more information about how I’ve been using technology in the classroom! Last month, in ECI 201, we worked with Sphero Robots to connect computational thinking to a new concept: Coding. We learned how to work with coding on a basic level as we connected the Spheros to an iPad app and coded them to move through different maze patterns. The goal of this assignment was to see how coding can be used in areas of Education that aren’t just Computer Science and how it can be used to foster the 4 components of computational thinking: decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithm design.

At first, I was hesitant to work with Sphero because I thought it would be really complicated. Like most people, my mindset was that coding was only really used in Computer Science and was too complicated to try and introduce to younger students. Like with the Piper Kit, I was thinking “I’m not a Computer Science major! I’m an Elementary Education major!” However, after working with Sphero, I’ve realized that there are applications out there that can allow younger students to learn how to code, and in a fun way! At my elementary school, the only technology we ever really used was in the computer lab, and we only worked with computer games. I would have loved to have Sphero integrated into the Elementary Curriculum because I think it would have helped students get more acclimated to technology at a younger age, and it would’ve been brought about in a fun way to keep students engaged.

Coding with Sphero

The Sphero is a sphere-shaped robot that moves by “rolling”, can light up different colors, and can activate different sounds based on the codes you choose. The first step was to activate Sphero, and we had to use Bluetooth to connect an iPad to a Sphero Sprk+ which “lit up” in response to its connection.

Sphero Sprk+ is connected! *Photo taken by me*

To code our Spheros, we used the Sphero EDU app on iPads from METRC library at NC State University. The app allows you to create multiple programs of saved code. When creating a new code, we chose to do a “Block Program”, which gave us a blank screen where we could drag and drop different actions for Sphero to complete. This process involved decomposition because we had to choose between a large variety of code options (movements, lights and sounds, controls, etc.) based on what we wanted to accomplish. It could get overwhelming having so many options, but we were able to narrow down the options into the ones we needed to complete a task. This involved some experimentation at first, because we had to learn what each part of the code did, how to adjust speed, how to adjust distance, and which angle to use to make Sphero roll a certain direction. This also required abstraction because when coding Sphero to move in a square-like pattern, we could eliminate the other functions like “lights and sounds” because we only needed “movements” and “controls” to make Sphero move.

Sphero Coding screen with Sphero EDU app *Photo taken by me*

One of our tasks was to partner up and make Sphero roll through a pre-designed maze by coding it on the iPads. This task required algorithm design because it was a step-by-step process of inserting blocks of codes to make up the entire code that caused Sphero to complete the maze. As we were going through the individual codes such as “Roll 0 degrees at 50 Speed for 2 Seconds”, “Delay 2 Seconds”, and “Roll 90 degrees at 50 Speed for 2 Seconds” to get Sphero to move forward and then turn a corner, we started to recognize patterns in the code. We could gauge the distance on the physical maze and the certain degrees, speed, and time that we needed to code for Sphero on the iPad, so that Sphero could achieve the maze. Pattern recognition allowed us to code at a quicker pace as we progressed through the maze.

Sphero Map *Photo taken by me*

What I gained from this experience

From this experience I gained more knowledge about technology in general, and also more knowledge about how technology can be incorporated into the classroom to foster student development in computational thinking. Working with Sphero taught me that anyone can code and that it can be fun! There are many ways that Sphero robots could be incorporated into classrooms. With creativity, the possibilities are endless!

Going back to my Astronomy Class, I think it would be really neat to incorporate Sphero into teaching the Solar System and its movements. The Spheros are round and already resemble a “planet”, so I could use a Sphero to represent Earth and the other planets.There are so many possibilities here, but I think one of the best ways to incorporate the Spheros is to show planetary motion. I would guide students into coding the Sphero to orbit the sun in an elliptical pattern, Kepler’s First Law of Planetary Motion.

I could also include the moon’s orbit of earth in the process and show students what causes the phases of the moon and how eclipses happen. Having an engaging, physical model could help students better understand the astronomical processes because they can visualize them and play a part in the process by coding the Spheros’ motions. One of the most popular misconceptions in Astronomy is that the Earth’s shadow is what causes the phases of the moon, but by using the Spheros, it would be easier to show the positions of the moon in relation to the Earth and sun during different times of day, days of the year, and seasons, to show that this thought is incorrect.

Phases of the Moon http://www.moonconnection.com/images/moon_phases_diagram.jpg