Your experiences with C2 in education?

Hi all,

We're keen to learn more about how Construct 2 is used in education. What have your experiences been so far?

• Where have you used Construct 2 and what did you teach with it?
• What went well and was there anything you found difficult?
• Any tips or tricks to share with other teachers/lecturers?
• Are there any features or things that could be changed about Construct 2 that would be important for education-specific uses?

Would be interested to hear any feedback :)

The first and main issue here is the language. Nothing wrong with English or with C2, but could encourage people around world if C2 maintain a translated (or to document what changed, so, we could help on this) version for various kind of languages.

It's pure statistical, but 1 in 1000 know english here, and him maybe never minded about C2. By the other side, 1 in 10 kids wants make their game to play around and show for their friends, play together, etc, increasing their skills and introducing them to the Game Designer / Programmer world.

I told my IT teacher once:

"Come on! I want to learn Construct 2 next year! Not this Geometer's sketchpad bullsh*t!"

That's it. I don't think he even listened to me and my friends I already introduced C2 to.

I'm a lecturer in university. In this semester, i started a Construct 2 course. It's a pretty good experience. But i think we need more interesting tutorials. Most tutorials and games depends on platforms. I believe that Construct 2 can be used with more creative ways not with limiting games.

Well, I have prototyped an educational game for Linkit/Macmillian and also created an EBook Engine for demonstration purposes (with an ongoing project to proliferate it). But to teach kids to use Construct 2 to program games and apps is a different ball game altogether.

I am looking to create a series of tutorial videos for Construct 2 (as a subscription service), so you could say I hope to teach others... not necessarily adults, but kids as well. And if one thing is seriously missing from Construct 2, are proper tutorials - the kind with accompanying videos, presentation material, and exercises (targeted for kids) with sample solutions.

Stay tuned for this...

mrcgkh - have you got any specific suggestions for the kinds of tutorial we're missing?

Hi Ashley

I gave a graphic and animation course. In the beginning of the semester i planned to use Construct as a animation editor. Games are my second choice. But i see that animation abilities are more limited. In the beginning my idea is using image processing techniques with Construct 2, but i understand that it's not possible with offical plugins. And now we're focusing on games.

Another idea is creating web pages. You're not suggesting construct 2 as a web editor. But i believe with adding more features it can also be used for creating great web pages.

Tutorials about using technical animation processes will be nice. As an example a mapping feature like google maps.

Construct can be used like a general HTML5 engine. It can be used like a real Flash alternative. I never be a fan of Flash. But Flash is not only limited to games.

mrcgkh - what animation features are you missing precisely? I'd also add I don't think web pages is a direction we want to be taking the product in at this time.

Ashley

For example creating Powerpoint style animation capabilities, For examle chancing color of a specific pixel of sprite. Construct is missing per pixel animation abilities. But HTML5 supports this types of things.

Is this a community college? Excuse the brashness but you're using Construct 2 for everything but it's intended use?

Web design, use DreamWeaver. Animation use Maya and Flash.

I can't offer anything of value to the discussion, I'm not an educator, but I did use C2 with a bunch of non-programming business students to create a web-app; they loved the simplicity.

I'd love Scirra to whack some promotion material around to schools, especially KS2/3, I can't see how the program wouldn't be a hit and the government is always going about how it wants to encourage kids to embrace the computer, look at Raspberry Pi

mrcgkh - if you want to tint to re-color sprites, you can do that with WebGL shaders. Is that why you thought you needed the ability to set pixels? Setting pixels one-by-one usually absolutely kills performance, which is the main reason it's not supported, and there's almost always a better workaround than to use a 'set pixel' feature.

I worked in a vocational school about computer programming. We have 3 course about graphic and animation. In first course we teach Photoshop&Gimp, in second course 3ds max&Blender and for third course Flash. Flash is very slowly developed in years and a closed source program. I changed the third course and started to use Construct 2.

There are also some web programming lessons about Dreamweaver&Visual Studio&ASP.NET. But these tools not adding much interactivity to web pages as Flash.

My students love Construct 2 and its far more easy than Flash. But still some Flash like features is missing.

Ashley

In this course i also give info about splines, nurbs and graphic algorithms etc. WEBGL and core HTML5 can be used for creating this type of stuff. But for students, i looked for a more simple solution like construct 2

I'm just writing up some lessons for introducing C2 to my web development class and I'm really impressed with the tutorials already on offer. If I was to wish for more it would be a 'suggested improvements' section at the bottom of the beginners tutorials, with a few hints about how each might be achieved (but not the full solution), perhaps with an accompanying forum for each tutorial so that students can get together and discuss solutions. Another boon to educators would be an assignment section where assessment problems are set out, along with necessary resources needed to complete the problem and maybe even a marking rubric setting out what needs to be accomplished and to what level.

I am a high school physics teacher in Illinois, USA. A little over a year ago, we learned that our school district would be buying iPads for use in the classroom, so my fellow physics teachers and I decided to learn to program so we could develop better tools for our students. After developing and releasing products in Objective C and php/HTML5, we discovered GameSalad, which I tried with my students and loved.

We have just recently discovered Construct 2 and it has completely changed our workflow. Our team has gone from 1 developer and 3 designers to 4 developer/designers, and in just a few weeks we have tripled the number of cool tools for our students to use. We are looking forward to holding workshops for the other teachers in our district to show them how to use Construct 2 for their own classrooms.

This school year I have used both Construct 2 and GameSalad with my AP Physics C students (2nd year, calculus-based physics). The results are as follows:

GameSalad (5 days total):

Day 1: I showed students the basics of making a platformer. Students loved the ease at which they could apply the physics engine.

Days 2-5: Students made something that could be controlled without the use of the keyboard or mouse, as we would be designing tools for next year's iPad students.

Construct 2 (two weeks):

Students were tasked with recreating a physics simulation from the phet.colorado.edu website so that it could be used on the iPad (no keyboard or mouse controls). PhET simulations currently require Flash, Java, or both.

After spending time with both, I can say that my students had an easier time picking up the workflow in GameSalad. Construct 2's event system is less intuitive for them, and many of them were frustrated because they couldn't figure out how to do simple things like they could in GameSalad. In particular, they have a lot of difficulty with the idea of "picking". On the other hand, the fact that Construct 2 has a built-in image editor means that my students could create something other than colored rectangles right in the program itself. I introduced Adobe Fireworks along with Construct 2, so many of the students have had a great time working in Fireworks and importing images.

Bottom line: Construct 2 is THE BEST TOOL out there for teachers to make simulations for their students. The fact that Construct 2 creates HTML5 natively means that the output can be used anywhere on any device, including websites and iBooks Author Widgets.   However, before I try it with students again I need a pretty tight set of lesson plans in place so they don't get lost. GameSalad was easier for students to just pick up and use for my AP students. My regular students will definitely need a much tighter script to follow before they are comfortable creating with it.

My Ultimate Dream: A Construct 2 iPad port. If there were a way to bring Construct 2 to the iPad in a student-friendly package, I would sell my left kidney. Construct 2 is an incredibly powerful tool, and if it were combined with the anytime, anywhere accessibility of the iPad we could create a generation of people who could think analytically and creatively.

PS - We will be finishing up the PhET simulation project next week. As soon as we are done I will post a link to the website with student work.