Celebrating the Solar Eclipse with a Digital Breakout Room, a guest post from Wendy Lentz

Monday, August 21, 2017 is shaping up to be an exciting day for parts of the United States.  The long awaited solar eclipse is upon us and offering excitement, opportunity, and challenge in the education community.  While some schools may still be enjoying summer vacation others will just be dipping their toes into a new school year.  My school district in Missouri will be just four days into the new year.  In anticipation of the big event I have created a digital breakout room (and shared it for you to use below) for my students to complete.  While breakout rooms can be used for any grade level or curricular area, this particular breakout is designed for grades 6-12.  With some additional adult support it could also be use with younger students perhaps in a home school environment or adults at an eclipse party.

As we prepare for this big event, I am keeping three primary objectives in mind, knowledge, safety, and experience.  I desire for my students to gain new knowledge in the science behind the event and in the known history of eclipses.  I also desire for them to be safe and understand what the dangers could be if they aren’t making smart choices. Finally, I want them to truly experience this phenomena with their eyes and their brains.  With all of these things in mind I knew this was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up.  I imagine my school and most all schools in my area will be planning events for this day.  With that being said I am preparing to be flexible with implementation.  While the breakout could be done on the day of the eclipse I don’t want to chance kids missing the chance to complete the breakout.  We will complete the activity a couple days prior to allow for full participation.

So what is a breakout room?  Breakout rooms began gaining in popularity around the world in 2010.  The former first family was even spotted taking in a breakout room a few years ago in Hawaii. These rooms are physical spaces that challenge the participants to breakout or escape by solving problems, puzzles, codes, and riddles in order to unlock parts of the room leading to an eventual escape, hopefully.  The rooms are themed and typically carry a 60 minute time limit.  My family recently participated in a breakout room for my daughter’s thirteenth birthday.  It was intense and fun.  It was interesting to see how everyone in the group worked a little differently during the challenge and how proud we were when we solved a problem.  Meanwhile, one member of the group constantly begged for clues.  While I won’t name any names his relation to me rhymes with fusband.

My family escaped!

Watch as these newscasters experience a breakout room.

Where is the connection to the classroom?  As breakout rooms grew in popularity, teachers began incorporating the structure into their classrooms as a way to teach or review material while causing students to investigate, solve problems and to build teamwork skills through a highly engaging activity.  This kind of experiential learning and teaching is driven by how something is taught versus what is being taught.  These activities also offer students opportunities to build a resilience to failure and the courage to persevere through a challenging situation or problem.

As the use of breakout rooms in education has expanded, the structure of their implementation has also evolved.  Earliest rooms were designed and built by individual teachers.  In 2015, the website and blog breakoutedu.com began offering quality kits, templates, and breakout plans for teachers to purchase and use.  Recently, some teachers began using a digital version called digital breakout rooms.  These digital rooms offer students the same opportunities to solve puzzles, search for clues, and unlock a variety of locks without additional costs to the teacher.

Here is the link to the digital breakout room for the Solar Eclipse Breakout.  I have not included the answers on the site but I'd be happy to share them with you if needed.  I would highly encourage you to to complete the breakout on your own first to fully experience it; The Cult of Pedagogy would call this Dogfooding.  The base of the breakout is a Google site with embedded information and clues.  Encourage students to read carefully and closely.  Remind them to click on EVERYTHING and think creatively to unlock the locks in the google form.  If students don't enter a lock code correctly the line underneath will remain red, but when it turns blue the lock is unlocked!  Remember that you are just the facilitator.  It is natural for the students to reach a point of frustration when they are stuck. You can help guide them by continuing to offer questions to open their thinking.  Keep in mind that some of the information on the site has no purpose except to inform, these bits of information are called distractors.  When the students unlock all the locks they should submit the form and give the secret phrase to the teacher.  Plan to take photos of student successes and attempts then share with your school community!  I have also included some teacher tips including a 45 minute digital timer, tips for helping students when they are stuck, and a place for participants to leave feedback after the experience.  All of this can be found on a tab in the top right hand corner of the site.  Please keep in mind that the “Teacher Tips” tab is not connected to the breakout room in anyway but everything else on the site is fair game.  If you have questions feel free to email me at lentz-wendy@trojans.k12.mo.us or on Twitter @wendylentz.  Enjoy the eclipse!