‘Mom, today we are going to do an escaperoom at Dutch!’
Son super-enthusiastic. Quickly puts his books in his bag and jumps on his bike. I haven’t heard him talk so passionately about Dutch before.
Could it be the escaperoom?
Escaperooms have been mega-popular for years. And with all ages. How come?
Interesting question. Not an immediate answer….. But let’s use it especially in education, because it works on students’ intrinsic motivation. I previously wrote a blog on this website about the escapeboxes created at the teacher’s training of the University of Utrecht for science subjects.
Make your own escaperoom
Nienke Lurvink is a teacher of media design and ICT/natural science at Public Education Groningen. She is an enthusiastic gamer herself and also likes to use games in her teaching. She explains that she sees escaperooms more broadly than we know by default. For her, an escaperoom is not the room with assignments you have to escape from, but she uses it as a metaphor for (briefly) relaxing from daily educational practice, by immersing students in a game in which cooperation and learning from each other are central.
For Nienke an escaperoom can be a single puzzle or a series of tasks in which students have to decipher codes. Nienke has now created a number of games, which she shares with you below. On her website you will find more games, all aimed at secondary schools. For example, for geography, languages, history and physics.
Tof is dat Nienke niet alleen spellen deelt, maar ook de weg ernaartoe. Zo vind je op haar site twee handige flowcharts. Met die flowcharts kan je bepalen of je theoretische of praktische opdracht geschikt is om een puzzel mee te maken.
Click on the puzzle pieces to download the games (in Dutch):
Contact Nienke
via LinkedIn or her website escaperooms in de klas.
Nienke gives several workshops. On 25 May, you can join her at the Conferentie Gamedidactiek in Utrecht. An overview of other conferences and workshops around gaming and education can be found here.
