The middle of May brought some beautiful weather along with a group of 23 great youth workers from 8 different countries to Vihi, Estonia. They came for a training course named “Createamity” that aimed to develop competencies of youth workers and leaders to use game-based learning and specifically escape quests in an educational context.
It was a week full of fun and challenging play. The trainers Pavel Vassiljev and Filip Gabor invited participants to explore the world of educational games and DIY escape quests through a mix of theory and practice. Together with the “Critical Escape” project team, they re-constructed the “Museum of Communication” game, invited the group to pass an Actionbound challenge, develop puzzle chains, experiment with setting learning objectives and create their own portable escape quests that would fit in a 40L box and could be played in any setting.
In only 48 hours and with a bit of support from the team, three educational escape rooms were born to promote socially relevant topics like environment, peer support and family relationships while making players engaged in solving problems through effective communication, team work, creativity and critical thinking.
Working under time pressure in a big intercultural team in a foreign language can be a big challenge and it takes a lot of effort to make it work.
It was great to see how initial struggles and misunderstanding turns into a creative flow of ideas and a team creates synergy embracing different points of view. Once the concepts were ready, they were tested a few times by participants and the hosting team and tweaked more. The games were ready to be play tested with young people and we decided to take them to Viljandi.
On 21 st of May we set up four escape rooms in the Cultural Academy and the Youth Center of Viljandi. A total of 34 young people had the chance to play through the escape rooms and discover the topic. It was really great to see young people and adults happy to play these escape games and discuss the topics afterwards. The participants were nervous at first but when they saw the power of games and real emotions they cause, it was an eye opening moment and the nervousness disappeared.
At the end of the week we discussed the importance, power and educational value of games when designed with solid learning in mind. Participants shared their thoughts and ideas on their possible use of created games and since then our project Facebook group has frequent updates from various parts of Europe where created games or new concepts are played with young people.
In Shokkin Group we love games and we have experienced the educational value of games so many times that makes us want to share this with more educators and youth workers. We have been happy to host “Createamity” and give 23 youth workers a chance to explore a new tool, 34 young people to learn about important topics through games and can’t wait to share with the rest of you a manual on portable escape quests that is currently in development.
#Stayshokkin!