Two Excellent Tools to Create Educational Games for your Class ~ Educational Technology... - 5 views
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Brett Boessen on 25 Aug 13Game Maker is a much more complex - and hard to learn - tool than Kodu, but the kinds of games you can make with it are more varied, too.
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Bryan Alexander on 26 Aug 13Is it something a small college can handle?
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Brett Boessen on 26 Aug 13I'd say yes, depending on where in the curriculum you're looking to insert it. My CS colleague here does work with his students on Unity, which is FAR more complex than Gamemaker. But I wouldn't recommend trying to get students to make games with GM unless you're going to contribute a lot of your class time to it: demos, how-tos, workshops, and assignments (all multiple). With Kodu, you probably could get away with one longer class, two shorter ones, or an out of class evening workshop, and then just let them play with it. So as always, it's what you're hoping to accomplish with the assignment of the tool that will drive which tool you choose. :) For me, GM is really for people who want to make games they plan to circulate among people outside your class; Kodu could be that or could be to help learn the fundamentals of game design (or other procedural concepts).
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Bryan Alexander on 26 Aug 13Good to know, Brett; thanks. Now, isn't Kodu aimed at the XBox platform?
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Brett Boessen on 26 Aug 13It was originally, but now you can download it for Windows. I /believe/ you can then export your games to a public platform as well, but they may only be available to others with Kodu installed.
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Bryan Alexander on 27 Aug 13For Windows? That changes things a great deal.