Construct 2 in schools

I'm a finalist at the University in Debrecen, Hungary.

Some days ago I consulted with the head of my department about my thesis.

I'll go to local schools to get a view about how they teach object oriented programming for students and how they teach the Comenius/Imagine Logo Software and what can they achieve with it. But that's not the point of this topic.

So, I'm gonna write my thesis about Scirra's Construct 2 and present how powerful it is, and how can it reach schools and how can they teach it. In short: I'll create a bunch of examples and tasks for students and teachers as well to make it easier to adopt C2 into shools.

My first question here, that for schools, does the buisness license sufficient or they would need a special agreement with Scirra?

Thank you!

From Scirra's Purchase page FAQ:

All educational insitutions are welcome to use the Free Edition! If an educational institution wishes to order more than 10 copies with all the features unlocked please contact us for a quote.

Tom, it appears institutions is misspelled here.

Thank you!

I think that the free edition is perfect for schools, the 100 event limit is really never going to be a problem if the objective is simply to learn object oriented programming!

Yep, the free edition should work very well!

Everyone is right, feel free to encourage/distribute the free edition in schools, they are all totally allowed to use it and we encourage it!

Once you finish your thesis, if you could send us a copy we'd love to have a read of it! If we can assist you in any way as well, please let us know.

I'd gladly send a copy of it (even printed version), but it will be in hungarian language, will it be alright? <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I'm an IT teacher from Australia and I use Construct 2. One thing about teaching is that it's not about the technology, but about the quality of teaching resources.

Tutorials, examples, guides, worksheets ready to go. This is how you sell well to the education industry.

I currently use the free version because it's all we require. I did email about the cost for education licence, but haven't heard much.

In Schools in Australia GameMaker is more popular. However the free version doesn't want to run on my lab, likely because of the online updater.

Students love seeing their games in a browser. And uploading them to DropBox is also a great feature.

The balancing act with building games is having tasks that challenge the smart kids but don't alienate students that aren't that much into computers.

So what I do is have several parts to a project. The fist part is building the game. I give them the marking key and a video (fraps recording) of me building the game. But the criteria are very detailed. All the asset names, positions and sizes of sprites and all of that.

To this point everyone is doing well. To then separate the students I have other parts with theory questions and modifications to the game. The mods start off easy with things such as changing the size of a sprite or doubling the score system to hard ones such as adding a bonus enemy every 30 seconds and things like that.

My resources so far have been the tutorials on this website and various YouTube videos. GameMaker tutorials can be also used as the Event-Action approach is very similar.

Feel free to ask me questions!

Thank you so much for this informative reply. I'll definetly take and think on these informations you just wrote down.

I'll ask my questions when I'll have any (but as soon as I start the project, they'll definetly appear <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> ).

No worries! I love teaching IT, so very happy to provide input. Maybe get referenced in your thesis :D ?

This will be one project for next year with my Year 10 Games Development students. A typical breakout / arkanoid game. What I'm thinking is that every student will create one level with a background and that way it's more personal. Students love to see their work "out there".

I will need to learn a bit more about creating sprites. I totally suck, much better at the coding part. But some students have talent in this area as well, this is perfect for group work with one artist and the other person building the game with simple sprites that can be replaced later.

dl.dropbox.com/u/93868285/Breakout%20Game/index.html