Digital Escape Rooms
Since we're all scrambling to come up with online programming during COVID-19, I thought I'd try my hand at Digital Escape Rooms.
First, I came across a handy little tutorial on using Google Forms for a Digital Escape Room in the Facebook group Programming Librarian Interest Group, shared by a Children's Librarian, Erin Honeycutt, in Georgia.
There is also a good YouTube tutorial you can watch here.
I used one of her Digital Escape Rooms, Escape From Wonderland, as a template for my first one. I used her puzzles but changed the images and storyline in my adaptation.
Since Alice in Wonderland is public domain, I just took chunks of text to put into the storyline. I had to modify it to make the puzzles flow.
Once I got the hang of it down, I did the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-inspired one, since it's a personal fave and I already had plenty of images leftover from my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Celebration.
I added links to ebooks/audiobooks of both stories that patrons could access with their library cards.
I perused Pinterest and Google for more ideas on puzzles, and here are my favorites:
And a couple more I haven't used yet but may use in the future:
Both of these Digital Escape Rooms are intended for children, with easy puzzles. I haven't attempted one for adults. But kids are a forgiving audience if you don't know what you're doing!
For more examples, here's a great compilation of Digital Escape Rooms.