To hype you up for my upcoming talk at this year's ELTOC by Oxford University Press and for our book called "AI Literacy in the Language Classroom" with Zsofi Menyhei that's published soon, I'm going to run a multi-part series of posts with creative human-AI collaboration ideas. Here's part 1 that's about creating two kinds of escape room.
An escape room is basically a series of tasks wrapped in a background story. Students usually have to complete a mission or get out of a situation by completing a series of tasks, meanwhile collecting codes or pieces of evidence. This kind of arrangement can engage students more by increasing their motivation.
Have you ever created an escape room activity?
I don't really know what it is
Hallottam már róla, de még nem
Igen, egy egyszerűbbet
Yes, a more complex one
(UPDATE: just noticed that when translating the post, the poll options also became Hungarian, so here are the English versions:
"Hallottam..." = I've heard of it but not yet
"Igen, egy egyszerubbet" = Yes, a simpler one)
Escape room type 1 - using a real image as a starter
In this case, I started out with a treasure map that I found with a Google search:
My prompt looked like this:
I'm creating a short escape room task for teachers of English to demonstrate what this game is. Look at the uploaded treasure map, which has 5 stations. Create a short background story for this game, explaining that they have to get the treasure before something happens to them. Also, create a very short description of each station: what it is and what they need to achieve there. There will be 5 short tasks altogether, each somehow connected to their summer vacations and the approaching school year. 3 tasks should be paper-based, 1 should include picture upload, and 1 should include QR codes.
I received pretty good ideas for each stage but, of course, I wasn't immediately satisfied will everything that I got. These were the original activities I got:
1. Sea Monster: "Write a short story about the most exciting adventure you had during the summer. Use at least three new vocabulary words you learned over the break. This task should be done on paper."
2. Mermaid Rock: "Write a poem or a song that reflects your feelings about returning to school after a fun-filled summer. This task should be done on paper."
3. Skull Rock Island: "Solve a series of riddles related to your favorite summer activities and subjects you look forward to studying this year. This task should be on paper and include a variety of brain teasers and puzzles."
4. Lava Rock: "Take a picture of an object that represents your summer vacation and upload it to the designated platform. Write a brief description of why this object is significant to you."
5. Sharkwater: "Use the QR codes placed around the room to find and answer questions about new school year plans and goals. Each QR code leads to a different question or activity."
So I started the back-and-forth brainstorming and editing game with ChatGPT, asking for smaller variations and edits in the activities. I asked for two riddles for task 3, but they were too difficult, so I kept going until I got something easier.
I got rid of task 5 and replaced it with an online vocabulary activity accessed via a QR code because I didn't have the time or the energy to create separate activities to go behind several QR codes.
I also asked for a congratulations message.
Finally, I put everything one by one into Google Forms, and created the digital escape room. To learn more about how to create escape with Google Forms, here's a video.
Escape room type 2 - gamified assessment
I wanted to create a gamified revision activity for my university group before the final week. I knew that I wanted to use Szabina Gyurisán's idea of an interactive Genially image that I had seen in one of her workshops. I also knew the activities I wanted to include. I just needed the rest.
First, I chose the Genially template. I chose a space map with 5 planets. I didn't change anything in the image.
Then I needed a background story to set the scene. I asked ChatGPT to help me with this prompt:
I'd like my students to play a game in which they need to travel through a map of the galaxy. There are 5 planets. They need to get from home to the final planet. I need a background story that explains why they have to travel from Earth to the final destination. I also need names for the 5 planets.
I decided to use the story as it was but tweaked the planet names a bit.
Then I had to work a bit on my activities. I asked ChatGPT to paraphrase some definitions for a matching game because I wanted to have slightly different definitions than the ones originally shared with students. I also asked for a generic piece of feedback that students would have to then rewrite (the course being about assessment and feedback). The other 2 activities were OK because I already had them.
I also wanted some tokens to be collected after each successful mission, so first I asked ChatGPT to help with this prompt: "Students need to collect artifacts in each planet. Give me an artifact for each." Then I went over to Claude to ask for some help with illustrating them: "I'd like simple 2d illustrations for these artefacts..."
Finally, I added the texts to the Genially template and drew my own token cards. And done! :)
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