[game_edu] GameMaker vs. Scratch

[Allan Fowler]

Hi Curvus,

I have used Game Maker, Scratch, and Kodu Game Lab in both High Schools and Middle Schools. They all have strengths and weaknesses. But if the goal to teach programming concepts, then Scratch or Kodu Game Lab would be a good choice for the younger students. Game Maker is also a good choice, but I use this with more senior students. 

There are other choices worth considering and in my opinion Visual Basic is also a very good tool for teaching programming concepts to High School students.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards


Allan Fowler


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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 07:03:25 -0700
From: Corvus Elrod <corvus.elrod at zakelro.com>
Subject: [game_edu] GameMaker vs. Scratch
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org>
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	<CAE1Eo7+aKJK-UE0r3X7AXBNCT5aa67Ey0rXAh=FMC-a9B9rpNQ at mail.gmail.com>
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Are you ready to rumble? GameMaker vs. Scratch in the classroom. GO!

As I'm becoming more deeply involved with local education-focused groups
(notably: http://ogpc.info and http://chicktech.org), I'm noticing a lot of high school and middle school educators are using GameMaker to teach introductory game design concepts as part of initiatives to get kids (particularly those under-represented in the STEM fields) interested in technology/programming. And while I wouldn't argue that GameMaker is a decent choice for people looking to prototype or rapid-develop games they intend to release, I wonder if it's actually the *best *choice for educational purposes.

Wouldn't Scratch make more sense? Doesn't Scratch more immediately and directly teach universal programming concepts that can be applied to much more than games? GameMaker, it seems to me, teaches you a lot of game-stuff before you ever get to the foundational logic structures of programming-think.

Maybe that's okay? Maybe that's ultimately counter-productive?

Has anyone else grappled with this? Taught both and have thoughts about the differences? I'm particularly interested in hearing stories about student engagement, successful completion of projects, and (if you have it) success rates of students who go on to major in STEM-related fields in college.

--Corvus

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