Low-tech “Breakout EDU” looks to invigorate education one wooden box at a time. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/06/30/low-tech-breakout-edu-looks-invigorate-education-one-wooden-box-time/86580464/
Breakout EDU takes the appeal of the “escape room,” a recreational team sport in which a group of people use their wits to break out of a locked room, and turns it inside out
Instead of a locked room, teams must figure out how to get inside a tightly locked box.
Breakout EDU builds the wooden boxes by hand and sells them online, along with an assortment of hasps, locks, invisible-ink pens and guidelines.
Teachers build lessons around students' nearly insatiable need to get into that box.
Wants to impact teaching at a basic level, making it more problem-based, more social, more interactive and more physical.
Teachers have stepped forward with hundreds of games on nearly every topic, from environmental science and Advanced Placement physics to Kindergarten-level literacy.
More than 200 games are freely available on the companies website.
The website gives teachers the option of charging one another for them, none of the teachers has asked for payment.
In many instances, Bellow said, teachers don’t even bother to lock up a valuable object in the box. “Our theory is that the journey to getting the box open is worth it,” he said.
Tracks with bedrock “intrinsic motivation” research that suggests the way to motivate people to work hard is to give them challenging tasks that they can figure out for themselves while making them feel competent and connected.
“There are cheers, there’s frustration, and ultimately, if there is success, it’s that moment of ‘We did it!’ And that is intrinsic. It doesn’t need something else,” he said.
“I don’t see kids cheering when they do worksheets.”
Schools will often buy one box, then, within a few weeks, five more, “because the reality is that it’s an idea that works.”
There are about 8,000 teacher members who are “extremely active” in Breakout EDU’s online community, sharing lessons on Facebook and posting instructions to YouTube.
Kits can be open sourced
Once a school purchases the kit, teachers and students need not buy anything more. They can simply modify the hardware to suit what they want to teach.