KPS uses $15,000 grant to create educational games

With assistance from the College of Menominee Nation, students and staff at Keshena Primary School have aided in developing a new way to teach material in the classroom.

The school received a $15,000 grant from CMN to help develop nine games for Breakout EDU.

Breakout EDU is an educational website that provides 700 digital games and 600 games to be played in person with a Breakout EDU kit. The games consist of a scenario, where a group of people are given clues and that group must work together to solve the problem or the puzzle.

Amy Bohr, teacher and building technology coordinator at Keshena Primary, and other teachers have incorporated Breakout EDU into their lesson plans, differing from a traditional classroom setting of lectures.

“The games give the students a chance to learn multiple disciplines and subjects, like social studies, math, science and culture,” said Bohr.

For in-person games, teachers are given virtual instructions to set up the puzzle within the classroom. This was made possible at KPS as money from the CMN library grant went into providing teachers with supplies for the games.

According to Laura Robinson, youth services librarian, the grant money was used to cover expenses of the supplies that went into the development of the games.

Amy Bohr was a part of the team that helped to develop nine games for Breakout EDU.

“We were given resources to both create the games and run the games,” said Bohr. “Things like kits, posters and clues were given to us.”

Students in the STEM program at KPS were also given the opportunity to travel down to Escape Green Bay and learn about the factors that going into creating and running games like those seen on Breakout EDU.

With the nine games that were developed by the students and staff at the school, three of them have been published.

“We incorporated Menominee culture into the games that are published so far,” said Bohr.

Due to the fact that Breakout EDU is open to the creation of games from all over the world, this allows students and teachers an opportunity to experience culture and different learning strategies from different parts of the planet.

“We call these games community created, in that different communities all around the world create games with that specific culture in mind,” said Robinson.

According to Bohr, the COVID-19 pandemic affected the students ability to create the games. When school was shut down, members of the staff partook in weekly Zoom meetings and ultimately continued with the creation of the games.

This affected the students and staff ability to work together as Bohr mentioned that the students really enjoyed participating in the creation of the games.

KPS has adopted this style of teaching and learning as these games force students to work together in order to achieve their goal.

“With these games, students are actively learning,” said Bohr. “They are collaboratively working together to reach their goal. Sometimes the students won’t solve the puzzle, but they will be able to go back and used what they learned to try again.”

Robinson said that working closely with the school on this project has opened up a collaboration between the library and the school.

“The College of Menominee Nation are doing activities for Earth Day,” said Robinson. “CMN is providing these activities to the Keshena Primary School.”

Robinson owes this opportunity to continue to work with the school to the trust that was built with the grant and the collaboration on the Breakout EDU project.

“This was a great opportunity for us to collaborate with the school,” said Robinson. “This give us the chance to work closer with the school.”

lreimer@newmedia-wi.com