6 replies to this topic

[David Batty]

I have been teaching computer subjects in Colleges for 20 years, often full time in the early years, mostly part time in latter years.

I have been delivering GameMaker courses in schools and for one college in Lancashire for many years now, the classes are normally 6 to 12 weeks long, the classes are usually 2 to 3 hours long.

I find that GameMaker is picked up quite quickly, and its rare that I get a student who has difficulty getting to a competent level of skill.

The latter half of the course is dedicated to the students working on their own projects with myself as facilitator, after the first few weeks of the course (and the set projects each week) the students are fired up with their own game ideas and ready to take control of their learning.

I use GameMaker 8 and the students often source their graphics from the Internet or from Office Clipart.

For the last two years my students have been developing games for the OCR Imedia Games Design module.

Unfortunately with recent cutbacks in education, funding has moved to basic skills, and Games Design was cut from the curriculum much to the students dismay. The classes always had a waiting list of students eager to get on to the course after seeing what their friends had created but 'people playing games' was not considered a class to keep.

I have now decided to offer my services to other schools in the area to train the teachers and the students and get them going on GameMaker, the teachers then cascade their learning to other classes/pupils. I do this for other subjects like Photoshop with great success.

Its a shame we have cutbacks on this kind of course, but I know there are many open minded schools and with the changes to the IT curriculum from September I hope to be busy delivering GameMaker based game design courses.

I find Gamemaker is a great subject to teach, the classes are far more interesting than any other subject I have taught (and I have taught a lot of subjects) because you never know where the students are going to want to go with their projects, so it never gets boring.

Are there any other teachers out there with similar experiences?

[Jack Indie Box]

I would love to have been in your situation, i have been using game maker since version 4 and taught myself, i couldnt even write the alphabet back then! I have taught many people but as I am not a qualified teacher cant come into schools and use my knowledge. I would have loved OCR Imedia Games Design module to exist back when i was at school, there were 2 classes in my year in ICT gnvq and the other class got the choice to make a game in game maker and i didnt(i was currently making a really complex mario war clone) and the best game that got an A(effectively) was bassically breakout the demo that was in game maker 7(i think it must have been) which is hardly fair.

I would love to tutor real life students using these software tools and Gm is by far the best. And if you or any other teachers want som teaching material I would love to produce some tutorials or lessons for you to use.

[AdityaKale]

I have been teaching computer subjects in Colleges for 20 years, often full time in the early years, mostly part time in latter years.

I have been delivering GameMaker courses in schools and for one college in Lancashire for many years now, the classes are normally 6 to 12 weeks long, the classes are usually 2 to 3 hours long.

I find that GameMaker is picked up quite quickly, and its rare that I get a student who has difficulty getting to a competent level of skill.

The latter half of the course is dedicated to the students working on their own projects with myself as facilitator, after the first few weeks of the course (and the set projects each week) the students are fired up with their own game ideas and ready to take control of their learning.

I use GameMaker 8 and the students often source their graphics from the Internet or from Office Clipart.

For the last two years my students have been developing games for the OCR Imedia Games Design module.

Unfortunately with recent cutbacks in education, funding has moved to basic skills, and Games Design was cut from the curriculum much to the students dismay. The classes always had a waiting list of students eager to get on to the course after seeing what their friends had created but 'people playing games' was not considered a class to keep.

I have now decided to offer my services to other schools in the area to train the teachers and the students and get them going on GameMaker, the teachers then cascade their learning to other classes/pupils. I do this for other subjects like Photoshop with great success.

Its a shame we have cutbacks on this kind of course, but I know there are many open minded schools and with the changes to the IT curriculum from September I hope to be busy delivering GameMaker based game design courses.

I find Gamemaker is a great subject to teach, the classes are far more interesting than any other subject I have taught (and I have taught a lot of subjects) because you never know where the students are going to want to go with their projects, so it never gets boring.

Are there any other teachers out there with similar experiences?

I have written a book "Basics Of Game Maker" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007N6K79I) hope you find it useful

[Nori66]

Hello,

My name is Norbert Waciega and I teach Maths in Scotland. I also run a game designe club for my pupils, we started with simple mazes and moved to more advanced scrolling shooter and platform games. Unfortunately because of work load I had to stop running the club. The kids enjoyed designing games and I was surprised how quickly the picked up some of the concepts.

[flora]

Any chance of you helping me to design / deliver a course for school children in Scotland for suitable remuneration?
Regards
Flora

[Jack Indie Box]

I am willing to help you out. I will PM you with my details

[David Batty]

Any chance of you helping me to design / deliver a course for school children in Scotland for suitable remuneration?
Regards
Flora

Hi Flora,

What is it you are looking for? you can contact me at david@davidbatty.com or visit www.davidbatty.com