About the Project
Most of us have heard or have been involved in an escape room in the last few years. The Escape Room is a themed, adventurous game in which groups enter a room and locked in it. The goal is to escape within a short time, by solving a series of puzzles, experiments or missions. Today all over Greece there are over 200 rooms in private businesses.
The first Technology Escape Room at a Greek School was created in Corfu by teachers and students of Evening Vocational High School of Corfu. This unique project was created for the sole purpose of effectively implementing gamification techniques in the educational process. This groundbreaking project for public school, designed by the Evening Vocational High School of Corfu, was also given for implementation in the current school year, in 5 other schools in Greece and 2 schools in Turkey, which collaborate through the European Union’s etwinning program. Specifically, it is also implemented in Gymnasium Skripero Corfu and in schools in Athens, Thessaloniki, Larissa, Trikala and in 2 High Schools in Kusadasi, Turkey. Since the same project is also being created in seven other schools in 2 countries, this implies the difficulties and challenges that arise in the management and organization of all these partnership bodies. With this addition of schools, pupils and teachers from 2 countries, the project of the Evening Vocational High School of Corfu is a unique project with an international character, with its main characteristic being the collaboration for the simultaneous design and implementation of this educational project and the introduction of STEM via gamification techniques in the teaching process.
The most important parameter in this project is the introduction of students into new knowledge through gamification techniques. Students learn that they need to work together to achieve the desired outcome. Solve puzzles, exercises in physics mathematics and cryptography. They answer questions in quizzes and use maps and the internet to travel to new destinations and learn to analyze the coordinates of global monuments. Students finally read the biographies and also a brief history of each inventor or scientist who with his discoveries and experiments “participates” in the technology escape room.
Via the participation of pupils from different schools and countries, the students perceive the global nature of science and the fact that all the people of the world enjoy today the achievements of scientists who made their inventions, in different countries, irrespective of their race their colour, and their appearance.