Cyber Security Escape Room – Quantum Victoria

Our Year 7 LEAP class recently visited Quantum Victoria as part of the Victorian Enrichment Series for an engaging, hands-on cyber security excursion. Working in small teams alongside students from other schools, students tackled a series of tabletop escape room challenges covering phishing scams, cipher decoding, and password security. With a ticking timer and real consequences for wrong answers, the activities brought critical and creative thinking to life in the most exciting way — all while building important digital literacy and mathematical skills aligned to the Victorian Curriculum.

Students came away with a deeper understanding of how to stay safe online, how data is transmitted and secured across networks, and how to think critically when evaluating information. Most importantly, they had a lot of fun doing it!

Ms Lelekakis

Here's what some of our students had to say:

For our excursion we visited Quantum Victoria who are partners with the La Trobe University. We were lucky enough to participate in multiple tabletop escape rooms which were led by the staff members there. We learned about how passwords are important, how keys get sized and cut and how we can use a range of different ways to hide things and keep them safe. This hands-on activity was so fun. They had organised a range of activities which were exciting and we learned from them at the same time. I particularly enjoyed working with my peers and I learned how when we worked as a team things were accomplished faster by combining all our different ideas. I am so grateful to have been able to participate in this excursion and it was a great experience.

Reia 7I

Last Thursday we went to Quantum Victoria for an excursion. There were 3 activities we had to do, one was a phishing scam escape room, one was key escape room and a formula escape room. Each escape room had 3 puzzles we had to solve and got a booklet for each of them. There was an iPad with a timer and a keypad, and you had to get the password for each puzzle on the topic of the escape room and every time you guessed the puzzle wrong a minute got deducted. It was very stressful trying to solve all those multiple puzzles in that short amount of time, but it was also a lot of fun. We had groups of 3 and we were in a mix with different people from different schools and it was good seeing the way other people think. Overall, I really enjoyed it and it was a great experience!

Keya 7I

On Thursday the 14th of May the year 7 LEAP class went on an excursion to Latrobe University to attend a cyber security escape room. We were introduced to experiments where we faced a 30–40-minute time limit to escape each challenge, or we would get eaten by dinosaurs! We were taught how to pick locks and were shown the different parts, crack hash codes and the dangers of phishing. I personally enjoyed when we had the opportunity to look at emails and identify if they were real or fake. I also enjoyed interacting with the other school that was there beside us where we talked and even made new friends. It was a fun experience on my behalf and I think that mainly everyone enjoyed attending and learning something brand new.

Arielle 7I

On Thursday, our class went to Quantum Victoria, to do an escape room. We focused on 3 things, phishing scams, a key one, and a formula one. Each topic had 3 puzzles that you had to solve, you would get a timer on an iPad and have that much time to work out the answer to each of the puzzles. The answer would be a number code and you would have to put one in for each of the 3 puzzles in that topic. If you put a number code in and it was wrong, you would lose a minute from your timer. We started of with 30 minutes and some of the puzzles were challenging, but others not so much. There were also 3 groups of people, green, yellow, and pink. Each group would work on a different topic. We also had 2 breaks, recces and lunch. By the end of the day, I was pretty tired, but it was really fun. I really enjoyed this excursion and seeing how other people think.

Ruby 7I

On Thursday the year seven leap class went to an escape room. It was about not getting eaten by the dinosaurs. It wasn’t really an escape room because we sat in groups around the tables with folders and they have a code hidden inside. The first one we had to find out the scam emails, and we did bad and died. The second one we had to measure a key and get a code from the different gaps and we almost won. The last one we had to work out some ciphers, and my group did really well and finished 20 minutes before everyone else. Then we went back home. My favourite one was the last one because we did really good, and it was easy to complete.

Harry 7I

On our excursion, we rode the bus to Charles La Trobe College, where the escape rooms were. It was located in multiple different parts of the high school and was led by the Quantum Victoria team. The escape rooms weren’t necessarily actual rooms – they were tabletop escape rooms; we had papers and objects that helped us find out a code that we needed to put into on an iPad to ‘escape’. We had three different activities, they were Sneaky Ciphers, Fishy Phishing, and Password Panic, like the names suggest, they all relate to cyber security. In Sneaky Ciphers, my personal favourite, we had to get in groups of 3, I was with Keya and Shayne. We had to use the Caesar cipher – which is shifting letters a certain amount of time -- to decode multiple sentences which helped us find the code, I liked this activity because this one was actually one that we had to take time on and use our brains a bit more. For Fishy Phishing, we looked at images and maps to find the code, and for Password Panic, we looked at a fake social media page to look for clues to find a password and a code. All these activities taught our class about Cyber Security, and how to be safe online.

Annabel 7I

The excursion 7I went on was to deepen our understanding of cyber security and how we could fix flaws. We learnt how to decode ciphers and tell the difference between scam emails along with figuring out where photos were taken. We were accompanied by lots of nice staff who were passionate about cyber security and wanted to help everyone learn something new. We also made lots of new friends and worked with people who we didn’t know. When we left everyone knew how to be safe online and that not everything is as safe as it looks. And as a small gift everyone was given a Quantum Victoria pen.

Roha 7I

Ava 7I