Year 8 D&T students bring escape

14 YEAR 8 D&T STUDENTS BRING ESCAPE ROOMS TO LIFE

An exciting new digital technologies project has been developed this year, engaging our enthusiastic Year 8 Design and Technology students. In Term 4, the challenge was set to work collaboratively to design, create and promote an exciting new Escape Room company.

The project was launched with a fabulous 3-day intensive coding course presented by PLC Sydney Cambridge Computer Science expert Renee Noble, through her company ConnectEDcode.

Students learnt coding skills that were then brought to life in a creative escape room immersive experience. Students built ten prototype escape rooms, each with a unique theme. Teams worked to architect the idea behind their escape room utilising the technology at hand to create a captivating experience. Each team chose specific interactive technologies to learn how to code through a mini-lecture series with specialist tutors. With this knowledge, groups could combine the technologies available in novel ways, integrating this with their group's themed decorations. All groups had their creative design skills on display, ensuring the rooms were visually stimulating and technologically sound. This was a great opportunity for students to learn about data and how to use computers to represent data to create secret messages and codes. Innovative application of newly developed skills helped bring the escape room experiences to life in less than two days. With their innovative vision and confidence levels in the application technologies at a new high, girls began working collaboratively in their Design and Technology lessons to create unique escape rooms using Google SketchUp inspired by the television show The Amazing Race. Girls have been challenged by interactive puzzle-solving activities. Teams then developed a logo and a website to launch their own company. To further inspire their ideas, students attended a lecture with actual Escape Room designers from the company Next Level Escape. To launch the new companies, digital business cards will be laser cut and attached to a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag. This is a short-range protocol of communication between devices. A tag can be read by physically touching it with an NFCsupported phone or device. It has been wonderful to see our students embrace these innovative and varied digital technologies experiences, giving them every opportunity to explore and reach their individual capabilities.

Ms Jo Herrmann, Head of Technological and Applied Studies Miss Renee Noble, Cambridge Computing Science Teacher Before the Escape Artists event, my opinion on coding was: 14.3% I really didn’t like it 25% I kind of didn’t like it 32.1% I thought it was fine 21.4% I liked it a bit 7.1% I liked it a lot

After the Escape Artists event, my opinion on coding was:

10.7% I really don’t like it 7.1% I kind of don’t like it 28.6% It’s fine 39.3% I like it a bit 14.3% I like it a lot

As part of our Design and Technology project, this term we have learnt the skills in coding, talked to escape room designers and made our own escape rooms. We couldn't have done this without the help of ConnectEDcode, Next Level Escape designers, and our Design and Technology teachers. We had an incursion with ConnectEDcode where uni students helped us make our very own escape rooms as a class. Throughout this experience, we learnt the skills of perseverance, the importance of working in a team and the significance of being specific when coding. We are very grateful for the experience and everything that it has taught us and are sure that we will use these skills in future tasks. Syricia Rowston and Rafaela Lee, Year 8