How to create teaching assignments using Digital Escape Rooms

An escape room is a game in which a group of players work together as a team to uncover clues and solve puzzles in one or more physical rooms with the purpose of reaching a specific goal. They have a limited amount of time to work through different tasks.

A digital escape room is by and large the same, but the rooms are not physical. They are digital or more accurately digital texts. 

Digital escape rooms can be a great pedagogical tool to create variety in your teaching practices. We often talk about varying assessment practices, but in my experience most learners want teachers to create variation in how different subjects are taught as well.

I learnt about this concept when I attended a seminar hosted by Bro AOF which was taught by Eric Torsøe.

Fagfornyelsen or the new curriculum is based on certain policy documents and research that led to the conclusion that future learners need certain skills for success. Of these Critical thinking · Creativity · Collaboration · Communication  are called the four C's of the 21st century. 

Digital Escape Rooms is a pedagogical tool which can help stimulate and hone these four C's.

The idea is that learners will learn/read/ work with different texts but in order to get access to the text they need to solve a puzzle to get a password. They use this password to open the next text/room and so on. They have to be creative, think critically, collaborate and communicate with each other to navigate their way through different rooms.

In order to create a digital escape room you need to able to lock a pdf file. Click here to learn how to protect a file using a password.

In this powerpoint you will find a lesson plan using the concept of digital escape rooms. I have created 4 documents which the learners use as digital rooms. Room 5 is a quizlet, and room 0 is a short text in the textbook book Citizens. We used 45 min x 2  in two different groups of vocational learners and we had enough time.

Here are the different documents that the learners will open using passwords. You will find the passwords on the last slide of the above powerpoint, and clues to figure out the password are also in the powerpoint. 

Tips to create passwords:

1. The passwords shouldn't be too complicated.

2. You can use passwords that lead to interdisciplinary work - for example ask the mathematics teacher what the class has been working with and the password can be a mathematics task that the learners have to solve.

3. Make the learners create their own digital rooms.

4. The password can be revealed a short video that you have uploaded somewhere. If you are comfortable doing that, you can record a video of yourself teaching a certain theme and hide the password in the video. 

Good luck :-)

Sample of a well-written text (with teacher comments) that shows how you can answer the long – answer part of the written exam.

The following text is written by my 16-year old student Camilla Lønningen, who is a student of general studies/studiespesialiserende.

She has kindly agreed to let me share her text for teaching purposes. She answered this task during her whole-day test / written mock-exam this semester. The whole-day test consisted of two tasks: one short answer task, and one long-answer task. Given that she only had 5-hours at her disposal, the ideas presented by her are very well-executed. I have placed the text into a table to show how the content has been organized. On the right-hand side, I have made some comments to provide an insight into what I think works in the text.

Here is the link to the text that Camilla Lønningen created, and which includes my comments.

The text that she wrote was a response to the following task which is what the students enrolled in Vg1 or Vg2English typically get for their written exam in English.

In literature and films, the main characters often take on a challenge. Compare and contrast two such characters you have studied in your English course and reflect upon the challenges they have met and how their actions and choices help us understand them and the world around us.

In your text, you should

·         in short, introduce the texts you have chosen and how you will answer the task

·         present the challenges of character one with examples

·         present the challenges of character two with examples

·         compare and contrast the two characters’ challenges in a discussion

·         conclude by summing up the main differences between the characters

    Give your text a suitable title.

If you are interested, you can check out this post here about how to prepare for you written whole-day test or written exam. 

On the blog you can also find an example of a well structured argumentative text with teacher comments.

Hand-out: How to Prepare for Your Written Whole-Day Test/Mock Exam/heldagsprøve i engelsk

Students these days are preparing for a written whole-day test/mock exams. Here is a hand-out I give to my students as an aid to help them prepare before the exam and during the exam. The hand-out is a modified version of a text that I got from Anette Haugen, who teaches English at Kristiansand katedralsokole. 

Indigenous Peoples -Native Americans: A news report about Standing Rock, the Dakota Pipeline and discussion questions.

Picture source: Inhabitat.com <http://inhabitat.com/dakota-access-pipeline-operators-to-forge-ahead-in-defiance-of-obama/>

The curriculum for Vg1 and Vg2 specifies that students need to:

1) discuss and elaborate on texts by and about indigenous peoples in English-speaking countries 

and

2) present and discuss current news items from English language sources

On NRK TV, there is an excellent news report about the Dakota Pipeline in the US. The documentary provides a short historical context and also an interview with Dallas Goldtooth from the Sioux tribe in South Dakota. There is also an interview with Sandra Márjá West, the parliamentary representative for the Sami, the indigenous Peoples of Norway. She was at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. 

Here is the link to the news report. 

The students can listen to the report fro the beginning to 14 minutes and answer questions about segment 3, which is the interview with Dallas Goldtooth.

Segment 3 is from 4.59 minutes until 9:27 minutes.

I have written down the questions that the interviwer asks Dallas Goldtooth. The students are supposed to write down answers to these questions and then they can be discussed in class.

Discussion Questions

1)  When the interviewer asks Dallas Goldtooth with the Sioux tribe in North Dakota, what they will do now as the work on the pipeline continues, what does Dallas Goldtooth answer?

2) The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has said that Trump’s decision to continue work on the pipeline is a violation of treaty rights. In what ways is his actions illegal? (include terms like consultation, planning process, disregarding the process, study on the environmental effects in your answer)

3) What positive impact will this pipeline have on America’s economy according to Trump?

4) What are the negative consequences of this pipeline according to Dallas Goldtooth? (include terms like a leaking pipeline, drinking water, routing of pipeline through sacred sites)

5) This protest is not just about Standing Rock. What else is it about? What does Dallas Goldtooth answer?

Working with a CV and an Application Letter

Students need to learn how to write a good CV and an application letter to potentially secure a professional job. 

I have created a task which can be found here. 

I find that NDLA has excellent resources about how to write a CV as well as an application letter.
Here is a link to the resouces about CV on NDLA and here is a link to resouces on application letter on NDLA. 
I find that the CV on NDLA does not require the applicants to talk about their technical skills which I consider to be quite important piece of information escpecially for vocational students, so I ask my students to include that in the CV.

Vocational students are encouraged to use technical vocabulary and here is a link to technical vocabulary at the book Tracks website.

I also upload a sample text for the students which they can use as a template. The sample text can be found here. 

I can be reached at jaspreetgloppen@gmail.com or you can write to the Correcto Ergo Sum page on Facebook, if you have any quesions.