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Information For Teachers

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Over the past years GameMaker is being used more and more for educational purposes, as a vehicle to teach students about programming, technology, and of course game design itself. The activities range from technology summer camps (see for example the Childrens Technology Workshop) and elementary schools, to highschools and universities (for example the course on Game design at Utrecht University). On this page you find information and links that are useful for educators. If you created your own material based on GameMaker and want to share it, indicate a useful announcement, or want to express your opinion about this topic, please add to our Education Community forum section here [GMC] link them so we may add these.

Contents

Teaching Material

Clearly the various tutorials that can be found on the Tutorial Page can be used as material for classroom use. Here you find some additional material.

First course for children age 11-13 (in Dutch) - This site contains a first introduction to Game Maker for children of age 11-13, written by Ben Buitenhuis. Very clearly done. (in Dutch) GameMakerKinderen.doc and www.makeagame.nl.Weavcast

Course materials for secondary and primary - This site contains tutorials, demonstrations and challenges written by Tony Forster, Bill Kerr and Al Upton who are all using Game Maker in Australian schools. http://beam.to/billkerr

Game design course lecture notes - Here you can find information about the course about game design taught at Utrecht University, including a complete set of lecture notes. Note that this is an advanced course. http://www.cs.uu.nl/docs/vakken/gds/

Game Maker guide for highschool students - This guide, that includes videos of the basic steps, was written by Margaret Meijers (Taroona High School). http://ictmindtools.net/gamemaker/

Steven Isaacs, Middle School teacher, teaches Video Game Design to 7th and 8th grade students and online professional development web 2.0 technologies. He has been teaching GameMaker for over 10 years and has shared Tutorials (GM 8.0) http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/channels/c661FeVje Blog http://wamstechtips.blogspot.co.uk/ GM8.1 Tutorials http://gamedev.edublogs.org/2012/12/07/game-maker-resources/

Texas Games Network - Amanda Hefner, an Instructional Designer with Northside Independent School District of San Antonio, TX USA, has taught digital game-based learning for five years through classroom and web-based courses. A number of tutorials for students learning to use Game Maker are available for free download and use in the classroom. However, she has addressed the needs of classroom teachers interested in learning how to effectively teach video game development in her Teacher's Guides. Visit the Texas Games Network for curricular materials, student examples, and share ideas with a global community of gaming teachers. http://www.texasgames.net/

http://ictmindtools.net/ is Margaret Meijers’s excellent website with lots of introductory resources to GameMaker, including videos. Margaret is a high school teacher from Tasmania who has produced a range of resources for digital game making with both Game Maker, suitable for primary and high school students. These also contain video tutorials aimed at students with low literacy.

Game Maker guide in Spanish - This Spanish introductory guide explains the first steps into making a game (a break-out version) in Game Maker. It was written by Carlos Guidobono and Javier Filippini. It's spread over these pdf's: 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6. You can get them together in a zip file: Spanish Guide.

Reference Material

Here you find other documents related to teaching game design using GameMaker

• http://book.gamemaker.nl/ is home to The Game Maker’s Apprentice, which is a wonderful book written by Mark Overmars (the developer of GameMaker) and Jacob Habgood (Sheffield Hallam University). Essential (and addictive) reading to go beyond the basics.

• Jacob Habgood discusses the educational benefits of teaching game design at http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/10367/Education_Feature_Compulsory_Game_Development.php Jacob Habgood's site contains information, research and resources concerning the educational use of computer games, including resources for GameMaker and example games.http://www.gamelearning.net/

For more books on game design (with links) please see the list [1]

  • Article on game design in secondary education page 1, page 2, written by John Ashford: John Ashford is head of ICT at North Walsham High School, Norfolk, UK. He wrote this article in March 2003 for Sec Ed, a UK journal for secondary education. It describes how game design can be introduced in the curriculum and how Game Maker can be used in that context. Page 1: Sec Ed 1 and Page2: Sec Ed 2.
  • Article on game design for teaching, written by Mark Overmars (in Dutch) - This article was published in Tinfon in 2001. It describes how game design can be used as a vehicle to teach various aspects of computer science. In Dutch! Game design for teaching.
  • Lecture about using GameMaker in education (in Dutch) by Mark Overmars: Game Maker Lecture.

Forums

There are a other forums related to teaching game design in schools We'll be building up a list here:

GameMaker in Education http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?s=a795f273206f89ee0b7fcd80ad7ca76d&showforum=111


- International game making teacher's forum - forum link

GameMaker Community

Since GameMaker is about game design, it as a gateway product to introductory game and want to build an effective pathway for students and teachers from GameMaker to these platforms. Here are just a few things that we are involved with;

  • National STEM Video Game Challenge: The Entertainment Software Association, Microsoft, and AMD in partnership with the American Library Association, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and E-Line Media, will launch two annual competitions – focused on both playing and designing games for STEM learning. The Youth Prize, with $50,000 in prize money, will be for student designers from 5th to 8th grade, and will target outreach and opportunities for students in high-poverty schools from underserved urban and rural communities. The Developer Prize will be open to anyone and focus on STEM games for early learners, pre-K to 4th grade, with special emphasis on developing technologies with the greatest potential for effectively reaching underserved communities. In addition, AMD will expand its “Changing the Game” initiative over next three years, reaching 20 regions and 10,000 children in hands-on game development.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/16/president-obama-announce-major-expansion-educate-innovate-campaign-impro

For this competition we have a special category for GameMaker and highlighted a recently developed curriculum built around GameMaker called Activate (funded by the AMD Foundation, one of the Sponsors) http://www.stemchallenge.org/resources/Gamemaker.aspx

  • Developed out of The University of Southern California, GameDesk has been implementing it’s PLAYMAKING programs - whereby students learn by playing and by making games

Below is a mini-doc of a recent program focused on GameDesk's (www.gamedesk.org) game-making curriculum using GameMaker to teach underserved students critical math content, and to build their identities as producers and engineers.

http://vimeo.com/28634159 The video is a good overview of what they have done and are continuing to do with GameMaker.

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